Defaced, Derailed and Divergent
by Jebus Creiss
Summary: The whole POINT of being blackmailed was to stop Buffy and co. from finding out she was doing magic! In the aftermath of the '98 post-Valentine's love spell, Amy decided on a simple touch of revenge. And fortuitously to her mind, she also happened to owe Cordelia an apology…
1. Teenagers Can Be Idiots

**Disclaimer:** Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, etc., not me.

**Rating: T**

**Warnings:** violence, moderate language, AR character deaths

**Number:** 1/6 (probably)

**Summary:** The whole point of being blackmailed was to stop Buffy and company from finding out she was doing magic. In the aftermath of the post-Valentine's spell, Amy decided on a touch of revenge. Fortunately to her mind, she also happened to owe Cordelia an apology…

**A/N:** One thing to be stressed, and applied to the entire Divergence series: in each story, there are going to be initial _minor_ disrepancies from canon (check Ch3 from GtOoD for the reason behind this) – kinda like the Muslim practice of deliberately leaving minor flaws in their artistic works to avoid perfection and thus avoid encroaching on Allah's territory. Fortuitously, these 'flaws' are usually a result of not being able to recall the correct trivia of events off the top of my head at the time of initial writing (usually over fanon/timeline sequencing aspects, though not always) – at which point it's just a matter of A), making sure I haven't missed something obvious and/or pooch-screwing plotwise, and B) at least making the errors consistent.  
>There are a few possible cases of such flaws herein. I say 'possible', because I've deemed them minor enough to fit my purposes.<p>

**Timeframe:** BtVS S2Ep16 Post-'Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered', stretching through Ep18 'Killed By Death'. Epilogue…later.

**Pairings:** canon to start with, apart from one obvious divergence.

**Character Bashing?:** not really. The key to this is to keep in mind that we're dealing with the mindsets of junior-year highschoolers (refer chapter title).

**Feedback:** Yes, please! And feel free to point out any of those aforementioned flaws you happened to spot. After all, there's always the chance that I just flat-out missed one…

* * *

><p><strong>Defaced, Derailed and Divergent<strong>

**Chapter One: Meh… (or, Teenagers Can Be Idiots)**

—**ox-oxo-xo—**

Xander became aware of lazily swimming up through a sea of sedatives, floating in a calm expanse of lassitude and all things 'meh'. Memories fishtailed past without hurry, eventually assembling a rather nice picture, a good dream where his final battle had gone off without a single damn hitch…mostly, though the crying at the end of it seemed out of place.

Meh, it was probably his sense of realism trying to tell him something. '_Ah well, time to find out what went wrong…_'

There were eyelids. After a while he managed to remember where they were and how to make them work. Xander briefly debated whether it was worth putting on some sort of Face. '_Nah. Can't be bothered._' And so the 'meh' had spoken, for it was 'meh'.

Xander opened his eyes, wondering vaguely what the other dropping shoe was going to be.

Said footwear turned out to be a sensible ladies' dress-shoe, with an tastefully understated yet still painful-to-be-hit-with heel, which looked a lot like someone he _really_ should've remembered back when all this started.

"…Crap," Xander Harris rasped.

"Language, Xander," Joyce Summers responded. And boy, did that heel look painful… "And _you_, young man, have a lot of explaining to do."

—ox-oxo-xo—

It was somewhat unnerving, watching Xander's reactions as he haltingly responded with a mumbled apology. From the times they'd met, the tells were…different. Didn't fit in with the normal genially goofy patterns. Something was missing – the stresses were different, somehow. Less underlined, more subtle. Less…shallow, maybe. Less forced?

His guards were down, or at least his usual guards were down. That was good, though it remained to be seen what his new guards were like.

There'd been an instant, just one instant, where sheer terror had reigned when he'd realised who she was. Later, another instant where his vague wariness had ratcheted up to paranoiac-like levels, only to dwindle to nothing in the next instant as his eyes darted down to the small crucifix sitting prominently where her collarbones met. Between, though? There was simply no facial expression to speak of. Just hints, the sort of hints that meant things too specific, too generic to be anything else. Blinking, yawning, eyes unfocused and cloudy with exhaustion and/or medications and never meeting hers.

Xander huffed out a breath, something touching his blanked-out face that looked like resignation. "What d'you already know, Mrs. Summers?"

"I know about vampires." There. She said it, as…ridiculous as it still sounded coming from her mouth.

His eyeline dropped again, almost by accident, to her neck – to the cross she'd started wearing. It wasn't something she felt particularly enthused about, but she could see the point of making it a habit in this town.

"…And?" What? "Werewolves, demons, Hellmouths, magic…?"

She got the feeling he'd started running down a list, only to stop as he ran out of impetus. Or interest.

"I know all that."

"So…" Not a hint of anything. "…Oz?"

"Daniel is a werewolf. Willow is a witch. Buffy is a…" her lips twisted, "_Vampire Slayer_. Mr. Giles," twisted further, this time in well-banked fury instead of consternation, "is her Watcher. And Mr. Angel is a vampire with a soul."

Xander nodded to each, but stopped with the last one. "He has his soul back?"

"Yes," she told him. "Your computer teacher put it back in yesterday morning." Joyce watched his face light up for a moment, then slide into curiosity. "And then he visited yesterday evening, and told me everything."

Xander's eyebrow twitched, in a manner that wouldn't have looked out of place on 'Oz's' face. "…Huh. More courage than I expected outta him." Joyce couldn't help it, she smiled at that. It had been a rather long talk, at one point during which she'd made a very similar observation. And while he was not so ready to admit whether he was _now_, he'd freely conceded that he _had been_ something of a coward. "Does Buffy know yet?"

"Not unless Angel's told her, and I told him not to."

She stopped, took a deep breath, and kept her eyes peeled for his reaction.

As one might expect after over a century of direct experience, Liam O'Reilly (now known as Angel, previously known as Angelus – Joyce had asked a _lot_ of questions) had an excellent level of skill when it came to reading into facial expressions, body language and all the various tells of a person; both as a minor noble and as a vampire, he'd developed something of a habit of assigning them names and appellations after the fashion of the European nobles (Richard the Lionhearted, Galahad the Chaste, etc.). As applied to Xander Harris, however, the desperately helpful Angel had informed her of three possible…versions.

The first, was the one Joyce was familiar with: Xander the goof. The Xander who acted like a clown, even if he hated clowns (to the level of one of his worst nightmares being about a killer clown, apparently). And thinking back, she could see his point – in her acquaintance with the young man, Xander certainly wore his heart on his sleeve… The challenge, according to Angel, was spotting where he was serious about what he was saying, which he usually _was_ but not to the degree where most people were inclined to take him seriously.

The next, was one that only Angel really had any familiarity with: Xander the serious. To all accounts, he didn't appear much outright. Xander had the tendency to use various brands of humour, in varying mixtures of jocular versus sardonic, in most of his dealings. But Angel had (with a certain level of discomfort) told her of one instance of Serious Xander that he'd witnessed, and another that he'd heard of. That Xander was hard, pragmatic and slightly psychotic – a lot like his father, Angel speculated.

Goofy Xander would have, upon hearing her previous statement, pulled a face as if he'd smelled something bad – Xander the goof pathologically disliked Angel in all his forms. And Joyce could easily figure out why – because Angel was so very serious all the time…not to say 'brooding'.

Serious Xander's reaction, Angel was fairly certain, would have been a contemptuous narrowing of the eyes – Xander the serious also disliked Angel, mainly because he regarded the souled vampire as a cryptic coward. Angel had explained that a lot of what he did for her daughter had involved keeping eyes and ears in the demonic underground, or acting as Mr. Giles' dogsbody in places where the Watcher could not safely go. He had also mentioned that he'd avoided the company of people for a hundred years, for fear of what might happen should he lose control of his inner demon. Which, given that Xander knew and cared for none of this, would look a lot like cowardice.

Both versions of Xander, Angel had posited and Joyce had agreed, were versions that she could easily deal with. It was just a matter of the right approach, editing out the humour as opposed to merely ignoring it, applied with a generous dollop of 'don't lie to your mother'. She was close enough for it to work, at least.

What his actual reaction was…was an absent nod. Which, as it didn't fit with the other two, was likely confirmation that the Xander Joyce was dealing with was an entirely different animal. (Only not _literally_, Angel had stressed for some reason.) One that Angel had only experienced through the demon's perspective – more specifically, through the one fight that led to Angelus being captured and Angel's soul restored, the one who he'd likely passed out as – and now awoken as. Angel hadn't really had time to assign any specific theme to it, other than maybe just 'Xander the maskless'.

This was the Xander who had, to all reports, managed to somehow kill first Drusilla the Mad (Angelus's childe, an insane vampiric seer), then kill William the Bloody (Drusilla's childe, who had killed two Slayers…and been beaten across the head with a fire axe by Joyce herself when he attempted to kill Buffy)… And then – and this much was confirmed – round it out by capturing Angelus himself. _How_ he'd prevailed against Angelus's childe and grandchilde was apparently the subject of a great deal of conjecture in the Sunnydale underground, though there were a number of clues if one knew where to look.

What _Joyce_ knew was his list of recent injuries, though some had needed to be explained to her (the good medical staff of Sunnydale General being well-practiced at obfuscation). Moderately beaten, with bruises, scratches and fractured ribs, at least twice. Severely drained of blood (or 'anemia', as the doctors called it here), which landed him in hospital the first time. Choked at least once – while still in the hospital. Lightly concussed at least twice. Another beating, more choking, moderate draining, a stab wound to the far-left side of his chest, and first-degree burns dotting his hands and both calves…

None of which had stopped him from putting Angelus down.

_This_ Xander, though he probably didn't know it, had been given another name by the demons of Sunnydale: Death-seeker. Apparently said moniker came about after Drusilla's demise, causing harm to Spike's sire being a widely acknowledged method of excruciatingly painful suicide by proxy. Spike's death had if anything reinforced the perception of Xander Harris as a boy either utterly devoid of a danger sense, or actively seeking it out.

For _this_ Xander, Angel had only three pieces of advice for her: Be honest; Be logical; and Be very, _very_ careful.

Joyce blew out an exasperated huff. "If you're thinking I'm not happy about my daughter hiding something like this from me, you'd be right. The first thing I thought of doing was tracking her down and screaming at her – it's probably a good thing she was out on…patrol when Angel visited. I can see that wouldn't have gone well." She slumped; '_Be honest', Angel said – easy for him to say…_' "…For one thing…she _did_ try to tell me once."

His eyes unfocused for a few moments, unfocused more at least, as he considered this.

"…Committed?"

"For two months. Sunnydale High was the only school in the California system that would accept her by the time she was released." Joyce sighed, both at the memory and the bland one-shouldered shrug Xander offered in response. "So she had her reasons…

"The second thing I thought of doing was tracking Mr. Giles down and screaming at _him_, demanding he stay out of my daughter's life. It was Angel who talked me out of that."

Xander nodded. "Hizza believer," he slurred.

Joyce grimaced. "An _educated_ believer. I'd never convince him. And even if he left, they just send someone else – yes, Angel said all that." The grimace became something more like a snarl. "And, he told me about Kendra." Something flickered across Xander's features, but she couldn't catch what it was; Joyce could try to guess, but she had other priorities right now. "So whoever they sent next could be even worse."

She regathered herself. Here was a point at which she had to tread the line of honesty carefully.

"He suggested that I needed more information before I came to any decisions about what to do about…all _this_, before I talk to Buffy. He also said that you, Xander, were the one to talk to."

"Why?" he asked blandly.

"Two reasons. First, because you're the best one to ask. Ms. Calender and Daniel wouldn't know enough, Willow would tell Buffy the moment my back was turned, and Mr. Giles… at this point I still want to scream at him. You, though, are stuck here. So even if you wanted to tell Buffy, you can't until she visits or you get out." Xander nodded. She braced herself.

"Second… I want to know what happened to you. What did you do? Where did you go? How did you end up like this?" This was where she needed to tread the line between honesty and caution. Joyce continued gently, "As of now, you're on the hospital's suicide watchlist. You need to talk to _somebody_, or you're not going anywhere for a while. And I can see why you would have a hard time talking to a counsellor about it, because when I look back… all it really did for Buffy was get her to say it was all a cry for attention. It didn't fix anything. She kept out of trouble for a while, until we moved here. And then…" Joyce trailled off helplessly. That she knew now what was behind Buffy's antisocial behaviour didn't change the fact that she _hadn't_ known that for the past year. Or make it all that much easier to accept it now.

Xander remained silent, staring at the wall, still blank.

She really hated having to say this. "Maybe Mr. Giles… can talk to you. Or look into hiring counsellors that know about this kind of thi—"

"Doubt that," Xander suddenly interrupted. "He'd ha' brought one in for Buffy if he could."

"Well." She shrugged. He had a point. "I gather the hospital staff are fairly…lax about this sort of thing. They told me if you talked to me about what's wrong, they'll take my word for it and let you go." Joyce shook her head, baffled at their attitude. "That still seems wrong. But it's that, or talk to one of the hospital's psychologists, or…"

The young man kept on staring at the wall, a minute furrowing of his brow the only clue of what he was doing. She hoped he was considering matters, and not just being stubborn.

"Please, Xander, I _need_ to know how to deal with my daughter. I am _so close_ right now to just packing up and taking Buffy out of California. I know she does good things and it's probably a terrible thing for the world and all, but it's _Buffy_ and… I need to know. If I have to deal with all this, I _need to know_, Xander."

For a seemingly endless moment, she thought he'd remain silent. And then a heavier sense of resignation with a hint of dread settled into his eyes, and she blew a discreet sigh of relief.

—ox-oxo-xo—

"…Started with Valentine's Day," Xander began.

"Gave Cordy a necklace, nice one. She took it, dumped me anyway… Wanted her to feel what I felt, right? So did a spell." He gave the room a washed-out grimace, which wore away after an instant like everything else he'd displayed so far. "Went wrong – worked on everyone else _but_ her. Sorry 'bout that, by the way."

Joyce repressed her own wince. She did remember, now, chasing after him with an axe (and what was it with her and fire axes, anyway?), just one of a large mob of women and girls each after Xander's head (or his heart, but mostly his head). It had not been her finest moment, to say the least. Though not her _worst_ moment, either – after the events of the past two weeks, the day that she'd packed off her daughter for the L.A. sanatorium had firmly established itself in the place of _that_ dubious honour.

Angel had gone over what little he knew about it, mainly through Angelus having to track down his 'childe' Drusilla after she fell victim to the spell.

"And…the other girls hurt her when it kicked in."

—ox-oxo-xo—

_Cordelia glared down at her English book. Twice already she'd turned that glare on one or another of her sheep, and had to suppress a grim smile of satisfaction at the way they'd flinched. Oh, how she'd make them all _sweat_ with trepidation over what she'd do to pay them back for what they'd done to her…_

_She wouldn't go too far, though. Cordelia was in the fortuitous position of being expected, even _entitled_ to lash out – and though she would magnanimously accept their humbled, wretched apologies eventually, she couldn't deny it felt good to make them earn it._

_She _would_ accept those apologies, though. After all, it had really all been that damn _Harris's_ fault._

_And hers, a little…okay more than a little. Dumping him on Valentine's Day at the urging of the same friends who'd turned on her later, that probably _had_ been a bitch-slap too far. But oh, how he'd earned it afterwards. Madison had spilled the beans – after the beating (stopped only by two of the male teachers barging in and breaking it up) that had landed her in hospital for four days, the witch had obviously decided she couldn't use her tricks to bury a potential legal suit deep enough to get away with it, and told all in an effort to deflect the blame. And it had worked. Cordelia had been angry before – then she was _furious_ with Harris. That he planned to hurt her like _that_… that wasn't a step too far, that was charging past the state lines and over the horizon._

_Cordelia's dreams after that had been horrible. If Xa- _Harris_ had gone that far already, what was to stop him from going further? She'd heard from Madison about some of what the other girls had tried – would Harris have turned _her_ away if she'd tried something like that? What could he have had her _do_, before he dumped her back? _If_ he dumped her back, after all…_that_?_

_Deep down she knew, he probably wouldn't have had her do anything. Maybe that was why she'd told that friendly but mucho-weird Swedish nurse Anya just before she'd checked out yesterday morning that Harris was suffering enough for her tastes already._

_She didn't look at Harris as he threw out a cheeky response to the teacher's latest question. But she did note the way that Summers and Rosenberg glared at him from the other side of the class. And she also happened to glimpse, just out the corner of her eye, the flinch that Harris almost managed to hide without even appearing to glance in the direction of the other pair of losers that he was in the doghouse with._

_Yep. No friends, no life. He was hiding it, but he was suffering every bit as much as he deserved. And that was good enough for her to ignore him until she left Sunnydale the hell behind, literally, and forgot all about him and the way he'd betrayed her trust._

_Cordelia didn't ignore the inner flicker of guilt at her hypocrisy. No, she stomped on it until it stopped moving – it wasn't something she could afford right now. Not if she wanted to salvage anything from this._

_**("Hmph…unsatisfying. Had you not interfered…"**_

"…"

"…_**Hrm. Well, Anyanka and Halfrek do some fine work. It would be…an annoyance, finding replacements for them. Very well, I'll allow this to stand. However: my forbearance is far from infinite. Do Not interfere again."**_

"…"

"_**I like that young woman. Maybe I should offer her a job…")**_

—ox-oxo-xo—

"So yeah, went way wrong… Heh. So much trouble with Giles. Buff an' Wills though…"

—ox-oxo-xo—

_Buffy caught the flinch too, and had to stop from smiling. She'd almost forgotten how good it felt, seeing one of her friends sweat over her forgiveness. Sure, it kinda left her feeling a _teensy_ bit guilty, but she couldn't say he didn't deserve it. The fact that Xander had at least retained enough self-control to turn her and Willow down was pretty much the only upside of the fact that Xander had screwed up by the numbers and ended up getting Cordelia seriously hurt._

_As it was, it was just one more complication on top of a complicated and headache-y life. Willow was still shook up a little over the whole werewolf-boyfriend thing, Amy had popped back up on the radar with her latest disastrous stunt, Giles and now even Willow (a little) were showing signs of wanting to cosy up with Ms. Calender again… And of course Angel was always in the background. What was he planning next? What if he managed to pull off something terrible in the confusion of normal Hellmouth life?_

_What if, as Willow had mentioned yesterday while trying to justify how a round of innocent bonding on her part with Ms. Calender over poopyheaded best friends had somehow morphed into something much more important, they might be able to cast the curse again and get him back?_

_No, with all that on her plate – the _last_ thing she'd needed was Xander pulling something like what happened last week. He needed to _learn_ that. So she'd let him sweat for a while longer, probably forgive him next week. He was still one of her friends, so it was important not to break him. But he was strong – and hardheaded and stubborn and sometimes downright foolish; he'd live through it for that long._

_Next to her, Willow nervously smiled back at her best friend, or best non-Xander friend anyway – she'd caught that little twitch at her mouth, and knew what it meant._

_Willow really felt for Buffy, but at least _her_ life seemed to be going well. Great even! Which was a big surprise, what with her boyfriend being a werewolf, and her magic-teachers tiptoeing around each other. But she was learning all kinds of things! Oz things, and magic things, and even girl-things from Buffy! Willow had always seemed to miss the odd cue, even though her parents had tried to teach her to recognise them like a good little daughter of psychologists should. Now though, she had Buffy to watch for the cues she put out – after knowing her for a year now, Willow was finally getting the sense of which ones she could realistically follow without looking like a spazz._

_It was kinda weird when she thought about it, actually. She was finally learning how to be normal, and fit in a little better – at the same time that she was learning how to be so much _more_ than normal. She was learning not to _care_ so much about whether or not she fit in. 'Normal' was, a little more each day, looking like just another option that she could take if she wanted to. And the opportunity to have that choice just made her very happy. And a little guilty, but still happy._

_Angel and Xander were the flies in the herbal ointment right now, though. Angel had gone to ground after last week, but he had to be planning something bad, and Xander had just been a…a _poopyhead_ with that whole thing after Valentine's Day. But even there, it wasn't like there was nothing she could do. It was still a little wigsome working with Ms. Calender (or Ms. Kalderash, as it turned out), but they were making lots of progress on the soul curse! And as for Xander (she frantically tuned out the image of what a fool she'd made of herself over Amy's spell – it was just a good thing Oz had recent experience at not being able to control himself too, because otherwise things could've gone even more wrong than they had)… well, that was another thing she was learning from Buffy. She'd always relied on her Resolve Face to make sure Xander didn't do poopyheaded things in the first place – but now that she had Buffy giving her the confidence to let her best friend sweat, this was looking like something she could keep in reserve for when Xander did something exceptionally stupid like this._

_But right now, Willow was in class. So she put aside her glee over learning so much from so many different sources, and her forbidden little thrill of righteous feminine scorn over Xander's deserved taste of suffering, and the niggling sense that she'd forgotten something terribly important (which was easy, because that was something she tended to have bad dreams about before tests anyway), and buckled back down into learning something a bit more official._

—ox-oxo-xo—

"…Yeah, they kinda dumped me too." A bitter little quirk of the lips accompanied the statement, probably at the word he'd used.

'_Oh. Ohhhh… _That_ explains it._'

It wasn't exactly a _satisfying_ explanation. But it was the sort of ploy she could see Buffy pulling; Joyce had heard rumours from certain other parents back in L.A. about Buffy orchestrating that kind of behaviour; though nothing she could get further details on, it did happen to be something similar to what she remembered back in her own time in school. It was also the sort of ploy that Willow would follow – Joyce rather liked the girl, but as bright and generally nice as Buffy's friend was it was clear that she was both socially… naïve, and more comfortable being a follower for the moment.

More to the point, it was also the sort of ploy that Xander might misunderstand if no-one made sure to explain it to him. Her daughter had obviously forgotten that it was a _boy_ she was dealing with – a teenage boy, which didn't help in the least. They tended to be literal-minded at the best of times.

Buffy had misjudged, and so had Willow. They'd thought they were making him sweat – instead, they were breaking him.

It was yet another reason she was so furious with Rupert Giles. This sort of thing was _exactly_ what happened when you place so much pressure on teenagers. They made those sort of mistakes already, simply as part of normal life and learning how to live it. And then he puts _that_ on their shoulders?

—ox-oxo-xo—

_It was a master craftsman's work, that Face. Or at least he liked to think it was. It was the work of years. Xander had hated clowns ever since his sixth birthday, and that hatred had matured over the years (punching that nightmare-clown in its greasy Face had helped a lot on that front) – but that didn't mean he didn't get some of the lessons. Slather on the goofiness thick enough, in the traditional cheesy ways, and people stopped wondering too hard about what was underneath it. Not that too many people had cared, really – Willow and Jesse, their parents, occasionally his parents – and really Willow was the one to watch out for. But not even Willow had commented for a long time now. She hadn't even gave any sign of noticing. Which was good, because that was what it was important for._

_It was something that he was so _tired_ of, that Face. But it was also something that he'd kept glued on out of long habit, so he joked and bumbled his way through English class, and grabbed his stuff, and ambled out of the school gates and walked all the way home and snuck up the stairs and shut the door of his room – before the Face fell and shattered like a porcelain opera mask._

_Only for a moment, though. Then his jaw clenched and his cheeks tightened his eyes to slits with frustrated anger. Another Face, one of his rarer ones._

_Yeah, okay. He'd screwed up. That was obvious – being chased all over town by every female who came within range of him had bashed that into his head and other assorted body parts. Finding out that Cordelia had been seriously beaten hadn't made him feel any better, either – he'd wanted to make her feel like he felt, but not in the physical sense!_

_(There were still bruises and scratches from the impromptu lynch-mob, not that anyone else had cared to notice…apart from those seniors that beat the crap out of him the next day for 'hitting on their girlfriends' after school, as they'd phrased it in their heads to soothe their egos. At least they'd kept it below the neckline, so's not to discourage anyone _else_ who wanted their own justice later.)_

_Xander was all over the 'I screwed up' theme, no mistake about that. But where did the others get off shutting him out like this? Cordy…yeah okay, she had her reasons. Giles was still extremely angry, in his British way – he'd sent Xander scurrying from the library in shame with a frosty glare, the single time he'd dug up the courage to go in and see what was going on. Ms. Calender was just set on ignoring him, which was probably the best thing she could do. But Buffy and Willow? Hadn't he turned them down? Had they no idea how damn _hard_ that had been? Did he get no credit whatsoever for that? No mitigation on his sentence?_

_Not even a stern, "You're still in the doghouse, Xander!" from Willow? _Nothing_? Not even a word longer than 'Hmph!'? Hell, they were talking to _Amy_ more than him!_

—ox-oxo-xo—

Xander must have noticed her face tightening and misinterpreted, because he pleaded (or as close as he could come to it at present), "Don't blame 'em. Willow in nothin' but my shirt in my bed…Buffy in nothin' but a raincoat, tryin' a striptease…heh, an' that's before Amy turned her 'nto a rat."

Joyce tried not to wince, since he was on a roll. _That_, she hadn't heard about.

"All that… they shouldn't 've wanted me like that… shouldn't want me like that." Self-loathing flashed by and was gone under the blank. "…Can't forgive that."

—ox-oxo-xo—

_The Face drained away once more, unscrunching to unsmiling slackness as he stared into his wardrobe's mirror. His not-face, the one he'd kept hidden for years now, kinda like the way Harmony had been caking hers in make-up anywhere in public since she hit middle-school – for so long that it had been getting harder to think of himself without a Face, harder to drop it. For so long that he'd even tried becoming his best-known Face._

…_Who was he kidding? He deserved every bit of this. Xander should've listened better that time with the burning book, should've remembered that the school sat on a Hellmouth. Should've figured love goddesses wouldn't appreciate guys like him wanting their help just to screw someone over._

_Should've just seen the writing on the wall._

_He was Xander Harris. And things never went right for Xander Harris, no matter what he did. Or… (Buffy, and a cave, and another dance)… (Willow, and Ampata, and desiccation on the floor)… (Cordy, and a stretcher, and that damn kiss in the basement that came out of nowhere, and the most horrible Valentine's Day he'd ever experienced)… they just never did _him_ any good. His whole damn life should've made that clear by now. Xander was the bit part, the sideshow, Joe Schlub with a Purpose – but still Joe Schlub of the Sunnydale Schlubs, not like Willow (so smart, and so bright, and _god_ she'd be powerful when she grew up and left him and all these other idiots behind…and he'd thought that _before_ the magics). No, it wasn't that he couldn't help – it was just that he could only help in the ways that any random schlub could, which mostly revolved around doing what any good friend would._

_Magic up your female friends to try to seduce you? Yeah, _not_ the thing a good friend would do. So they'd wised up and thrown him away._

_Yeah, it hurt. But after playing fast and loose with the only two good things he had going after Cordy dumped him, Xander deserved to lose them both._

_He sighed, quietly. '_It was a good little run there,_' Xander decided. He'd got through most of his childhood with a couple friends, lost one friend but gained another in his place (…kinda – he was actually pretty sure by this point (refer: Ford) that she'd never really _had_ male friends and didn't quite know what to do with them unless they were pigeon-holed like Oz), had a hot girlfriend way over his standards for a couple months… Yeah, it was a good little run while it lasted – sucky as some parts of it had been recently, at least it had given him two reasons to keep going and ignore the inevitable._

_Well, the inevitable had caught up with him. His family had never paid more than lacklustre lip service to the fantastic idea of him ending up as anything more than a Tony-clone. A career in the fast-food industry, as Snyder had so charmingly put it, had been looming on the poor, ill-dressed, lazy, clownishly sardonic boy's horizon for years… that or, it turned out as he got older and something that could pass for wiser if you didn't look too close, being Xander-feed for something living in a sewer. And now his distractions from that were gone, and he could see the grey road paved with mediocrity stretching away before him. Or a short, painful death, much closer._

_As Xander Harris stood and slouched back out of the house for an aimless walk, he found that he honestly couldn't decide which path was more horrifying to him. He also found that he couldn't rustle up the necessary feeling to care that the sun was getting low in the sky. Hell, he'd only even tooled up on his way out because he was running on automatic._

—ox-oxo-xo—

Joyce supposed she should correct his misapprehension. But really, it was probably better for her to get the whole story out of him first. There were already enough complications as it was.

"So, then you met…um, that," this time she _did_ wince, "vampire lady."

"Drusilla, yeah her. She wanted… Don't think the spell wore off prop'ly for her. Or…I'unno. She wanted me."

—ox-oxo-xo—

_The mad seeress swayed side to side almost absently, hypnotic in her movements if not by any effort on her part. The poor suffering kitten followed her with his eyes anyway, those broken soulful pools she wanted to see filled with something so much more…sharp._

_It was time. He was so close, so very close to falling into oblivion, into the malignant flows of rebirth. Just a little closer, and she would see the rise of something so very, very glorious and vicious and fun, so much fun when she broke him to shards later…so much more fun when Spike got jealous and punished her for it. So she reached out and caressed his face, and set her other arm around his shoulder, and leaned in for the first bite, just for a taste…_

_Xander's body shuddered, his legs weakened, his eyes began to dim. He couldn't bring himself to care much as fragments of Xander's life flashed before his eyes. It wasn't much of a life. Moments with his friends scattered like flotsam on a leaden sea of casual neglect and occasional terror, friends that he wasn't likely to see again and who wouldn't miss him, and one friend he'd killed and just might._

_One last image, as his eyelids drifted closed. The last time he'd seen Jesse. The betrayal dawning as his face crumbled to dust—_

—ox-oxo-xo—

Desolate eyes staring through the wall, forgetting their witness, "…I don't know why I even bothered killing her. Was just, arm round, stake in, drop…"

Joyce saw the lie, clear as day.

—ox-oxo-xo—

_It was like an epiphany. Maybe it was an epiphany. Definitely it wasn't something that he could put into words worthy of its impact until much later._

_Amidst the sinking wreckage of his ignorantly mundane life, he couldn't find the last time he'd seen Jesse. Sometime that day he met Buffy. That night, maybe?_

_It should've been obvious._

_That betrayal…that wasn't Jesse. That was just something that thought it was. A pale imitation. Not even an evil twin – just something puppeting his best friend's carcass for a laugh._

_It should've been obvious. Maybe _that_, in the end, was the reason why vampires were so dangerous. Or at least, so he thought afterwards. Maybe it was _too_ obvious, so obvious you took it for granted and then forgot to remember it. It was so easy, when all they did was hiss at you, throw hackneyed lines at you, try to tear you apart. But when they thought they knew and loved you, thought they _were_ them and onto a good thing and wanted to get you in on the action?_

_That wasn't Jesse. It could've been. It was easy to forget, especially when you repressed like crazy. It _could've_ been – Jess never was particularly bright, and in his ignorance might well have thought it a good thing. But it wasn't._

_Jesse had ended when the blood demon stepped in._

_Drusilla wanted him. Drusilla was going to turn him. And Xander would end when the blood demon stepped in._

_And who would have to dust the monster that puppeted _his_ carcass?_

_So, almost of its own accord, one hand pulled out the stake he hadn't even noticed he was carrying and one arm looped around Drusilla's back and one piercing fist closed in like it was his own chest. And the last thing Drusilla the Mad saw as she arched in shock was Miss Edith shaking her head sadly over her killer's shoulder._

_So close…yet not close enough. Never close enough._

_Bereft of his demonic support, Xander fell to his knees and toppled over like a marionette with its strings cut._

_The epiphany was put into words later. But at that moment, as blood loss took its toll on his consciousness, it boiled down to:_

—ox-oxo-xo—

"I hate vampires…" Xander mumbled under Joyce's uncompromising stare. "No way 'm I letting one move in."

'_…Close enough,_' Joyce eventually decided. She could read the subtext well enough to be going on with.

She remembered that evening quite well. Buffy had come haring in through the front door, completely ignoring for once the fact that she was meant to be in her room doing her homework before bed, and babbled on the verge of hysteria about finding Xander. Gangs on P.C.P., and barbecue forks, and Xander being seriously hurt and she was calling her friends and getting them to meet her at the hospital and sorry mom but she was really in a rush… In the end, Joyce had given up on the lecture until later and drove her down to the hospital herself, with only a promise from the English librarian that he would drop her back convincing the worried woman to go back home. If nothing else, she'd decided at the time, any lecture would have made absolutely no impression on her panicking daughter.

As it turned out (so Angel thought), Xander had been aimlessly wandering towards one of her usual patrolling grounds for that night, and Buffy had found him on her own scheduled pass-through from one graveyard to another. No wonder she'd been so frantic – he could've bled out or been killed by something else, and it was only through luck that she'd been able to save him.

Angel had told her a little of the atrocities this Drusilla had perpetrated. The newly re-ensouled vampire had practically cringed with anguish as he told her of the monster that Angelus had twisted the former nun-to-be into. From what he'd added of what he knew through his brief catching-up period with Buffy and her comrades, Mr. Giles had subsequently spent a great deal of time castigating himself over the magnitude of his error, one that he at least recognised when it slapped him in the face – unlike her daughter and her friends, who (being children, and stressed-out children at that) missed it until much too late.

Just because his friends were ignoring him, didn't mean their enemies were going to do the same. No, that encouraged them to do just the opposite.

But there was still much more to this story she needed to know. "I drove Buffy here that night. Do you remember them visiting you then?" He nodded absently. "Do you remember what they said?"

Xander's dazed eyes went a little crossed as he wracked his memory.

"Nup. Guys looked pi— angry though…s'all I know. Think was…Ms. Calender, left me th'cross. Gotta thank her for that…"

—ox-oxo-xo—

_Janna Kalderash, or Jenny as she'd begun rebelliously thinking of herself over the past few months, sighed regretfully as Rupert hurried out after his charge and her friends with a frustrated glance at her._

"_That," she muttered, "could've gone better."_

_Buffy had not dealt well with this, not at all. After the Slayer's mother had finally left, she'd exploded – wept and wailed and at one aurally painful moment shouted at the boy who was obviously not hearing a word she said. Willow if anything had been even worse, daring exactly one look before burying her face in Oz's shoulder and bawling her eyes out between babbling tearfully about what an idiot she was and how she should've seen something like this coming._

_Rupert had mainly stood there and looked thunderous. Whether at Xander, his friends or himself was up for debate. Any or all options would be justified. What the hell had Xander been _thinking_?_

…_No, Jenny had a creeping suspicion she knew. After all, she'd gone through much the same thing just weeks ago. In fact, Xander had handled her period of being ostracised pretty much the way she'd just handled his – awkward avoidance, knowing that the other was in some measure justified but unwilling to give the appearance of abandoning their loved ones. (As a woman, Jenny had felt violated and more than a little annoyed with the boy after his ill-advised spell. As a Kalderash however, Janna couldn't help but concede that it would have been a particularly poetic piece of vengeance had it worked as planned.)_

_Though, there was one difference. Jenny had been a little surprised when Rupert and Willow approached her after the post-Valentine's Day fiasco, but gratified and hopeful at the result. Rupe had shamefacedly conceded that neither of them was blameless in the matter of keeping secrets. And Willow's help with working on the translation program had brought her work on the original soul curse forward in leaps and bounds – in fact, they might actually have what they needed before the week was out._

_More, she might actually owe Willow her life. One late night in the school's computer lab, plugging away furiously at the translation program with a desperation borne of the death of her Uncle Enyos and his Clan's delegation, she and Willow had felt the unnerving sensation of being spied on. From then on, they'd been careful to work in pairs, lock the doors and windows and never wander off alone… alone as Jenny might've been that night and on following nights, had she been left without Willow's help._

_Xander should not have doubted they'd do the same for him. They would have accepted him back soon enough, even ignoring this latest drama. Jenny had only logic to rely upon, over those painful, lonely weeks – the hope that allegedly wiser heads, one British head in particular, would snap out of it and realise that she was their best hope for restoring the curse. And hoping for calm and rational decisions on the Hellmouth had all too often proved to fall through._

_On the other hand, Janna had her family…or at least (her features hardened like stone) the _rest_ of her family. Sure, she was in the doghouse for the moment – but it was acknowledged that she was doing her best to reinstate the clan's punishment. If she pulled it off, all (or at least most) would be forgiven. And even if she didn't, she was still Kalderash – Janna hadn't transgressed badly enough to be disowned and cast out._

_It did not escape her notice that Xander's parents hadn't bothered to come to the hospital – nor that Willow had been unsurprised at this. Furious, yes – only a couple minutes ago she'd managed to un-cling herself from her boyfriend for long enough to swear to Xander that she'd give his parents a good stern piece of her mind, before attempting to storm out. (She'd managed three steps before collapsing on Oz again. They'd eventually followed when Buffy fled only a minute later.) But not surprised._

_Jenny sighed again. "What a mess…"_

_She turned to follow the path the others had taken. Then she paused, looking down at the insensate brunet. Pale under the room's bright fluorescents. Small in the way that so many looked when they lay in hospital beds. Vulnerable, in a way that Xander usually never seemed to be. Something about the tears stuck in his lashes…_

_Vulnerable… not a good thing for him to be after an attack. But she really did need to follow up with Rupert and Willow. So Jenny did the best she could, pulling a wooden crucifix with a six-inch bottom length sharpened to a pyramidal point from her purse, and clasped it into the hand that wasn't rigged up with sensors. Watching Xander's grip tighten around the haft instead of loosening was a heartening thing to see._

"_Hope you don't need that, Xander. Good luck." Jenny flipped the bedsheet over so that the cross was hidden but would fall away if he lifted his arm, and hurried out to catch up with the others. She felt for the boy, but it simply wasn't her problem to deal with – and the sooner she could get the curse restored and the current crisis over with, the sooner the people with the tools to be dealing with this could get to it._

—ox-oxo-xo—

"…'cause Spike came in next."

* * *

><p><strong>Ending AN:** In the closing chapter of GtOoD, I stated that I would apologise for the angsty angstossity of what else I'd written in that time period, should I ever post it. It is now being posted. So, y'know…  
>…Meh. (And sorry, I guess.) Yeah, it's angst. A few months' dust and some hard-eyed editing, and I nevertheless got something I could feel reasonably shameless about posting as part of the Divergence series. ('Reasonably' being the key word here… coming from the guy who posted GtOoD in all its clichéd, parodic glory in the first place.)<p>

Initial inspiration for this fic largely comes from one I read a couple years back, **Mediancat**'s '_Stalker Girl_'. I remember reflecting that Jenny hanging round to actually _explain_ the punishment - pretty much the equivalent of Willow's herein-absent 'you're in the doghouse, Xander!' - was quite possibly the only thing stopping Xander going off the deep end post-fic with sheer guilt. If not for that, from there I could easily see him going to ridiculous (not to mention borderline-suicidal) lengths to get his friends back. Here? yeah, he's not so lucky.

In the meantime, I hope you've enjoyed reading this latest addition to the Divergence series. The next instalment will be up in a few days. Until then…


	2. Demons Can Be Idiots

**Disclaimer:** Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, etc., still not me.

**Number:** 2/6 (probably)

**A/N:** Hmm… possible Xander OOC-warning? Personally I don't think so, particularly given his portrayal for this fic/series, but you might see it that way. Oh, and finally added the character tags that somehow didn't when I initially posted.

**Feedback:** Again, much appreciated, and hopefully useful.

* * *

><p><strong>Defaced, Derailed and Divergent<strong>

**Chapter 2: Meh? (or, Demons Can Be Idiots)**

—**ox-oxo-xo—**

"…_Well. Look at _you_, boy. Here you are, all alone. Good for me, huh?"_

_Xander opened one eye… meeting the baleful gaze of William the Bloody. '_Yep. Figures._'_

_And that was pretty much it._

_It was strange. Here he was, washed out and hung up to dry, and faced with the guy who'd taken down two Slayers – no doubt he should be terrified. But nope – there _was_ a little inner voice gibbering 'ohshitohshitohshit', it was just buried and left suffocating under a vast grey fog of 'meh'._

_Maybe it was the drugs? 'cause he was pretty sure this was a hospital…? Nah, otherwise he'd have been freaking out over being snacked on by Drusilla earlier. He'd felt like this back then, too – just too 'meh' to care much what was happening. Which probably explained Spike, come to think of it._

_Spike glared down at him, hunched over Xander like he was the vampire villain in some cheesy horror B-flick. Ironic. Then again, he'd just dusted his girl earlier, so he supposed there was a thing._

"_Y'know, boy… I can't say much for how your parents tasted. It's the booze, yeah – makes 'em taste sour. 'Specially when they drink the kind o' cheap hooch your folks did…"_

_Xander's other eye opened, both snapping wide._

"_Ohh, that get your attention boy?" Spike grinned down at him, hard and mad and with a hint of liquid amnesia on his own frivolous breath. "'Bout damn time. Heh, good thing about bein' in a wheelchair? People think yer harmless."_

_Xander cast his eye farther right and down. Heh, yeah – there _was_ a wheelchair behind him. No wonder he'd got in so easy._

_So that meant there was a good chance his parents were dead._

"_Hey, would you believe they thought I was yer employer? Figured you were out all hours, so you 'ad a job? _Boy_ were they pissed…"_

_Yep, probably dead. Which was a problem. A very large problem._

_Xander was well aware that he wasn't exactly in his right mind at the moment, and had been even _less_ in his right mind when he'd first been brought in. But he was pretty sure Buffy and Willow and Giles were there at some point. He vaguely remembered Oz, and…hah, like Cordy would come. Probably Ms. Calender, which was unlikely but still more likely than Cordelia Chase coming to visit his hospital bed. Sure, they weren't here now. Sure, he couldn't recall much beyond most of them yelling about something or other at him, and 'probably-Ms. Calender' putting something in his hand at some point. But they'd been there._

_That, as unbelievable as large, pessimistic parts of him had painstakingly pointed out over the dreary hours between then and now, could conceivably be counted as Progress. It had seemed, in his dreams, like maybe there was a tiny bit of hope – hope that they'd be stupid and/or trusting enough to forgive him. Eventually. Someday._

"_Yup, they were screamin' fit to burst." Spike chuckled. "Course, after my boys an' I got my hands on 'em, they were just screamin'…" The crazy grin fell, becoming something more calculating but just as mad. "By that point, I was wonderin' whether it was even worth it – pair o' soddin' bums. An' it's becoming increasingly obvious here that you don't give a toss."_

_Spike was wrong. He _did_ care. Because his parents were _dead_._

"_But no, I did 'em right 'n proper. Railroad spikes an' all." Spike smirked down at him. "It's the thing to do, y'know, when some little twerp like _you_," the blond vampire snarled with sudden, crystal-clear rage, "does in my Dru."_

_Because his parents were dead… and, and this was something he was far more clear on with how he should feel about it, there was not a hope in hell that Rory Harris would be left with custody. Any judge with two brain cells to rub together would take one look at his criminal record and break out the big ol' gavel of rejection._

_Xander had over a year left before he graduated high school, and more than six months before he turned eighteen. And he had no employment skills that said judge would recognise._

_That, quite likely, meant another relative, or a foster home. Which, given the few other people he knew who could've put him up had moved away (the McNallys), or were practically absentee parents already (the Rosenbergs), or were British citizens (Giles), or had a daughter who wasn't talking to him and would definitely be justifiably iffy about offering a temporary home to the boy who she first tried to seduce and then chased with a fire axe _just last week_ (Mrs. Summers…and the Rosenbergs for that matter, at least the first part)… meant that the overwhelming odds were on Xander Harris moving away from Sunnydale. After all, he'd quietly checked several times, mainly to keep somewhere in the depths of his mind the consequences of snapping and killing his parents himself even _if_ he got away with it._

_And so, as all this dawned on him, the little voice that had been trying to get him to at least put a Face back on fell sheepishly silent._

_'_See?_' he told it morbidly. '_That kinda luck's reserved for people who aren't Harrises._'_

"_Y'know, boy… you've been pretty quiet there."_

_Xander blinked, having almost forgotten about the vicious vampire looming over him. It was at that point a number of things occurred to the bedridden, detached youth._

_There was something in his hand, something covered loosely by his bedsheet. Something that felt like squared-off, polished wood. Something that, if he knew his previous visitors at all, was probably a crucifix._

_His current visitor had entered in a wheelchair. And was looming over him. And was holding the bed's railing with both hands with a white-knuckled grip. And was shifting to his left, as if to lean on his left arm._

"…_Your point?" Xander croaked in deadpan._

_He was probably going to die at Spike's hand. Slowly. Painfully. Without being turned, which was no doubt a plus – if it had been Angelus here instead of Spike, Xander would have been irretrievably boned, and probably skinned and filleted too._

_And…_

"_Well – probably 'bout time I do somethin' about that." And Spike's right hand came blurring over to form a grip on his throat. A grip that half-buried, hazy memories of C.Q.C. training told him was bad news, right over the carotid artery and its passage of blood to the brain. One squeeze held for a handful of seconds, and it'd be lights out and who'd know when or where he next woke up._

…_perhaps most importantly, what with the 'meh' and the fact he'd just woken up and been confronted with Spike, he hadn't yet put a Face on._

_Faces were important things. A few years back, Willow had been excitedly telling him about something she'd found in one of her parents' old textbooks, as often happened (both the esoteric knowledge and the excitement over it). A lot of that kind of thing went straight over his head, but this was something that he'd actually realised back when he was six. It was the reason why 'put on a happy face' was a real saying and not just a song – because when it came to faces, they worked both ways. You smiled if you were happy – _but_, if you pasted a smile on and wore it for long enough, you could convince your brain that it _was_ happy and that was why you were smiling. So, you smiled because you were happy, but you could also smile to _make_ yourself happy._

_His Xander-Face was only the one he used most often, though. He did have other Faces – Faces that only came out when the need was there for them, Faces which didn't see the light of day, Faces which saw nothing more than maybe a mirror._

_And then there was his not-face, the one that showed nothing extra because there was nothing he was trying to _make_ it show. It varied in effect, from what he could tell most mornings in the handful of moments before a Face slid into position – if he was happy, it smiled a little; if he was sad, it slacked out like it had over the past week. But when he was feeling little more than fatalism and a pervasive sense of 'meh', it showed nothing._

_So when Xander's right hand snaked out from under the bedsheet and slammed the spiked end of a crucifix into Spike's chest, his not-face gave his attacker not the least hint of warning._

_The resulting moment of shock on Spike's part, as he gaped down at the blessed shaft of wood sizzling in his chest and puncturing his heart, saved Xander's life. Because by the time he had time to snarl and attempt to tear his throat out with the one hand already in place to do it, his grip could do nothing more than pinch the carotid closed for a second longer before the hand crumbled to dust, with its owner following instantly thereafter._

…

_The on-duty nurse entered forty minutes later, to find Alexander L. Harris unconscious and covered in dust, (more) bruises around his neck, and a wooden crucifix with a long, rotted shaft lying on the ground next to his bed before a discarded wheelchair that didn't look hospital-issued._

_He sighed, put the crucifix on the cabinet in the corner, checked over the patient and updated his charts, shook out the bedding, and delegated a passing orderly to toss out the wheelchair. Some mysteries in this place, he had very quickly learned, were simply not worth solving._

—ox-oxo-xo—

…And if the first time hadn't been bad enough, he'd been attacked again right here in the hospital.

Which apparently wasn't that uncommon an occurrence. She also remembered Angel mentioning how he'd tried popping into Buffy's hospital room when she had that terrible flu, and how only Mr. Giles' presence and the threat of widespread attention from passers-by had stopped him – not to mention something about an invisible monster she'd had to…slay (she repressed another wince) while she was feverish. Yet _another_ thing she was unhappy about… though a quick rummage through her daughter's room had found some of the pictures the children had drawn that Buffy had kept, which was quite touching and made her feel a little better about that particular episode.

"Oh. So… Angel mentioned something about that. He thought you'd…killed him?"

"Huh… Well yeah, 'cause I did. Wonder how 'e heard, though?" Xander blinked sleepily.

—ox-oxo-xo—

_It started with one of Spike's original minions. Not the minion who had been discreetly tailing Drusilla – that one (who had been debating going over to finish off the Slayer's friend, but thought better of it when said Slayer came running over) had made the stupid mistake of telling Spike what had happened. No, this was one of the ones who had watched on as Spike sprang out of his wheelchair and twisted said minion's head right off._

_This particular minion had subsequently lucked out and been given the assignment of checking Willy's for info on just what had happened to the mad seeress. Not that he'd believed anyone but the Slayer could've pulled _that_ one off, and his hapless ex-comrade had mentioned something about 'the Slayer' right before he got decapitated._

_So began the first rumour: that the Slayer had killed Drusilla the Mad. Along with the second, which had been roused by a rather luckier minion who'd been sent to a different bar: that Xander Harris, a random human who was rumoured to have had the distinction of twinning the Slayer line, had killed Drusilla the Mad. (_How_ a mere human could do this, was the result of a certain amount of idle conjecture. Not much though – on the one hand, who knew what other ridiculous nonsense that cursed boy could pull out of his ass when the chips were down? and on the other hand, Spike was probably going to torture an answer to that question out of him later that night.)_

_Then, as Xander booked himself out late the next morning A.M.A. and headed home to find out what had happened to his parents, came the third rumour: that a wheelchair smelling of Spike had been dumped out the back of the hospital. And given that the quarter-Brachen demon who found that out was not only one of the orderlies but also an occasional supplier of drugs to the demonic black market, and as such was a guy who had met Spike on a few occasions, this rumour was given a great deal of credence._

_This rumour, on top of the previous two, led to a great deal of interest in that orderly. Smelling money this time, he moseyed on back to his department's rec room and, over strong coffee instead of the vodka he favoured, casually asked the other orderlies about that wheelchair and where it had been found. One quick check of the paperwork later, and it was further clarified for the benefit of his other audience (and _him_, let's not forget the monetary benefit to _him_) that it had been found in the room of one Xander Harris._

_Of course, what it obviously looked like was a little harder to swallow. Thus birthing the fourth rumour: that Harris had been attacked by first Drusilla the Mad and injured before the Slayer killed her, and then by William the Bloody while recovering in hospital before the Slayer came along again and killed him too._

_This in turn was of great interest to another vampiric minion, this one a member of Angelus's new gang. And so he carried the news back to his Master._

_Needless to say, Angelus was Not Amused – and once again, it was demonstrated that killing the messenger as violently and/or messily as possible was a time-honoured practice among the rapidly dwindling Scourge of Europe._

_And so, the fourth rumour was tentatively accepted as truth…_

…_until later that afternoon after high school got out, when Buffy Summers blasted into Willy's Alibi Bar and started beating the ever-living crap out of all and sundry – and more importantly, asking questions like 'who tried to kill my friend?' and 'who sent them?'._

_As it turned out, "But you killed them already!" was not a sufficient response. Nor did attempting to blindside the Slayer (who, to be completely fair, was gaping disbelievingly at the fantastic prospect of Xander 'Normal Guy' Harris offing half the Scourge of Europe) transpire to be a fruitful exercise in survival._

_Of course, Angelus heard about this as well. After killing _that_ messenger too, and trying unsuccessfully to imagine Xander Harris offing both Drusilla _and_ Spike, he had to conclude that it was…_technically_ possible. Pretty damn unlikely, but technically possible – while he'd have put his money on Ripper Giles being the one to actually do it, Drusilla _had_ been a little funny in the head over the boy since that Valentine's spell, and Spike was practically a paraplegic until he healed up. Not to mention, he'd probably lost his temper – Willy always had been a bit hot-headed._

_So Angelus ordered a few of his new minions (Drusilla's then, his now) to head over to the Harris home and keep an eye on the boy. Then one of them mentioned the fact that ol' William had already paid a visit there and did his thing last night, so Harris wouldn't be there. Angelus tempered the impulse to rip that minion's head off too and sent a few more out instead to check the motels and his friends' neighbourhoods, taking vicious satisfaction in ordering the idiot minion to spy on the Summers house._

_And as luck would have it, said minion never came back. Too bad, so sad…_

_Not that the other incompetents found Harris either. Or that all that many came back to tell the tale at all, for that matter. Hurricane Fluffy was in high swing, and tearing through a fair-sized portion of the town…_

—ox-oxo-xo—

"Where were you, anyway? The others tried to find you, and heard nothing." She shifted. "Well… other than…"

Xander sighed. "Lemme guess… the obits?"

"Yes," she whispered. "You heard, then…"

"Yeah, Spike told me," he replied. "Had to know, though. So I went home."

Xander fell silent. Joyce stared at him, barely restraining herself from exploding. Or fainting.

Eventually he sighed again. "…Yeah. Police suck at clean-up. Someone had to fix up the place." Xander shrugged listlessly. "Not like I had th' cash to stay anywhere else anyway. Spike robbed 'em on his way out."

Joyce slumped into her chair. "Oh my God…"

Of _course_ they hadn't found him – they'd been looking in motels and checking with relatives. They'd expected him to do the rational thing – as opposed to, say, hanging around the house cleaning up the mess (she swallowed as her stomach tried climbing out by her throat) left behind by his _brutally murdered parents_…

But then, the problem was manifestly easy to spot in hindsight: he _wasn't_ rational. He wasn't even _close_.

—ox-oxo-xo—

_Xander was beginning to understand his mother's sometime-fascination with attempting housework while she was three sheets to the wind. And also, doing it with less embarrassing results when she couldn't afford to be anything but sober. If nothing else, it kept the hands busy and the mind ticking over on insignificant things._

_The cops had at least carted away the bodies. But he still needed to tear up the carpet…scrub the walls…wipe down the TV…throw out the living room furniture…patch up the holes… Yep. Much easier to just go ahead and do it without thinking about _why_ he was doing it._

_He worked through the day and well into the night, carting wrecked and worn belongings to the kerb, almost daring the next vampire to try something. But there was nothing in the way of fangy interruptions. Maybe Angelus was out of the loop or something, who knew?_

…

_Meanwhile, Buffy came home late that night. Joyce didn't say anything, assuming that she'd stayed at the hospital; instead she asked how Xander was._

_Buffy walked straight over to the phone, radiating fury. A call to Willow's house followed… a call which had her going pale and dashing over to look at the day's newspaper._

_She dashed back to the phone. "I'm coming over, Will," had been the only further words she'd spoken before Buffy hung up and ran right back out the door._

_Sudden worry about Xander warring with her annoyance at being completely ignored by her daughter, Joyce walked over to check the paper herself. Surely if she was at the hospital, it couldn't be _Xander_…_

"_Oh dear God in heaven…"_

…_it wasn't Xander. But it _was_ Anthony and Jessica Harris, in three lines on the city obituary pages that Buffy had left open on the kitchen table. Murdered by gangs in a home invasion last night. P.C.P. suspected as a factor. Survived by one son._

_First Xander, then his parents. Targeted by gangs on P.C.P.._

_Her heart went out to the boy, it really did. But…her daughter was _friends_ with him?_

—ox-oxo-xo—

_Funerals were held quickly as a general rule in Sunnydale, unless for whatever reason those responsible for the arrangements wanted to hold off. So, as Xander slept the morning away, the clued-in lawyer that handled a fair number of these and similar cases each day checked for and found a life insurance policy – which, while 'gang-related death' wasn't listed as an eligible cause for the full payout, did at least guarantee funeral costs. So the number-crunchers ticked off the deceased couple's costs against the city fund which had quietly been set aside for such instances many decades past, with the implicit understanding that the City would recoup the loss from the upcoming (reduced but still easily sufficient) insurance payout._

_Calls went out to the listed contacts, and apologetic non-explanations given to non-local relatives as to the haste of the burial arrangements ('City ordinance, C.D.C., so sorry'). Meanwhile, two cheap caskets (wood-veneer over plastic-lined chipboard, pretty much the cheapest option – real coffins were expensive and took appreciable chunks of time to assemble) were procured from flat-packed storage and the two victims of two nights ago sealed under a pine lid (also veneered) with a few squirts of superglue._

_(Once someone had quietly asked the Mayor why wood was supplied for the lid, even with the chipboard sides. His answer had been along the lines of 'tradition'. Nobody asked again.)_

_Rory Harris was not the greatest of thinkers, or the most sensitive of men. So it was that at 2:30pm, without even really thinking about all the things wrong with this picture, he banged on the Harris home's front door._

_Xander blinked at his uncle, obviously just awoken. "Yeah?"_

"_The funeral's in an hour, Alex."_

_Xander blinked some more. "Right. I'll get changed."_

_3:30pm that day found Xander and Rory Harris at a moderately attended funeral, its mourners clad in their Suits (the title given to that black suit or dress which was habitually broken out for such occasions). It mainly consisted of the other workers on the construction site Tony had been hired onto for the last month, there on their latest 'Suit break' (which tended to happen at least once every couple months, construction crews having a fairly high 'turnover rate' in Sunnydale due to the early starts). The manager of the clothing store Jessica worked at also attended, along with a few of Tony and Rory's drinking buddies. Rory and Xander were the only family present, most being from out-of-town and unable to get away that quickly._

_Fifteen minutes later, they were in the ground. Fifteen more minutes, condolences delivered to Rory and Xander, and everyone else had gone off back to work, or off with Rory to Tony's favourite bar._

_Xander walked back home, just missing Buffy and Willow as they tried to catch up with him after the funeral, having been unable to get out of attending school that day. There was still more of his parents' stuff to go through and sort._

—ox-oxo-xo—

"…The house is packed up now," Xander said. "Rory came for a key next day, said it'd all do over at his house till people could pick it up or pay to have it sent off to 'em." Almost casually, like it was something that happened a while ago, to someone else. "Found the paperwork while I was cleanin'. Bank's gonna foreclose the house at the end of March."

—ox-oxo-xo—

_Snyder might have been a troll masquerading as a high school principal…poorly, but even he knew that there were times when restraint needed to be exercised with his students. As such, the afternoon meeting in his office one day after the Harris funeral was uncomfortable and highly awkward for him._

_Less so for Xander, who told him that he'd be busy for the rest of that week and the next._

_Snyder tried to bluster. Xander stared at him. Snyder conceded the issue with ill grace, but he conceded nonetheless. He could allow it – or he could ban it, be utterly ignored, expel him for that, and then be sniped at by the Mayor's office for insensitivity. And while it might be worth it to get rid of Summers, for Harris it just wasn't worth the hassle._

—_ox-oxo-xo—_

_The rest of that week ground on, for all concerned. And there was plenty of concern to be spread around._

_The least concern was shown by Cordelia, whose reaction to hearing about the 'gang murder' of Xander's parents was to snort and mutter "Good riddance to bad rubbish," and say nothing more on it. But she did stop glaring whenever someone mentioned the Harris name. And she did also finally accept her followers' apologies. The point had been made; no need to beat it into the ground._

_**("My Vessel's destiny remains largely unchanged… and, enough of the Souled Vampire's destiny remains for my purposes. Very well, I will allow it."**_

"…"

"_**Such insolence… No matter. My Birth will not be stopped.")**_

_Oz was only slightly more concerned to all appearances, not being one for outward displays of emotion at the best of times. In fact, he only showed as much as he did in solidarity with Willow – which he shamelessly capitalised on to calm her down and get her to eat. And sleep. And…well, pretty much anything that didn't involve looking for Xander – or working with Ms. Calender, who was using their shared 'research project' as its own distraction from her dead clan members and Willow's missing best friend. For his part, were he asked, he would remind the others that nothing had even been mentioned about Xander actually being _missing_._

_This was true – a daily inquiry with the head office had uncovered Xander's brief presence while everyone was in class, along with his ongoing (now official) absence. But the motels held no Xander, and his Uncle Rory wasn't answering his phone. (He'd headed interstate later that same afternoon after collecting the key, off to commiserate – read: get drunk – with various family members; Rory had promised to return to Sunnydale before the month was out. Not that Willow knew that.) And nothing Buffy had turned up mentioned even a peep out of the absent Xander's current whereabouts, no matter _who_ she beat up._

_And there was a _lot_ of 'beating up'. Especially of that one tipsy demon who said something unwise about Xander probably going 'death-seeker' for whatever reason. Or said demon's drunk buddy, who even more unwisely explained what he thought a death-seeker was (being so out of his head that he completely failed to appreciate the irony of that explanation – being decapitated shortly afterwards didn't help with this either). Or that one other demon guy, who said something about Xander being the one to drag Angelus into the Master's Cave, of all things – and even if it was true, what did _that_ have to do with anything? Oh, and let's not forget Willy, who had the cheek to tell her she wasn't looking so well and did she have that flu that was going round, because he really didn't want to lose business if he got sick…_

…_As it turned out, it _was_ the flu. And so Rupert Giles watched on, his every effort seemingly steeped in futility as his Slayer ran herself ragged to find Xander. If nothing else, Giles advised wearily – the only thing that seemed to work, at least for a brief while – Angelus was still looking as well. And if the curse succeeded, Angel could be drafted to keep looking for him, this time for the right reasons._

_And Joyce watched on, each day more seriously considering renewed professional counselling for her daughter, as she slowly fell to pieces._

—ox-oxo-xo—

Joyce regathered herself, with a great deal of effort. Even now, the story wasn't done.

"So," she drew another calming, steadying breath, "I hear you saved my daughter again on the weekend."

Xander froze, just for an instant.

—ox-oxo-xo—

_She should be saying something. Anything! Even yelling at him would be better than this! But of all the times to be stuck with absolutely nothing coming out of her mouth, it had to be _this_ time._

_Xander wasn't saying anything either. Just carrying Buffy on piggyback like he was her white horse in shining Hawaiian-print armour, walking along towards the hospital with his Serious-Face on as if Angel hadn't just clipped him upside the head. Buffy might've been saying something, but if she was it was because she was dream-talking. That meant she had a fever, and that was very, very bad—_

"_Breathe, Will."_

_She did. Now was NOT the time for a panic attack. Now was the time for questions and explanations and why was nothing coming out of her mouth!_

"_Keep breathing."_

_Well, she could do that at least. And when they got to the hospital, Willow found she could also tell the receptionist that Buffy Summers was really ill and feverish, and it was probably the flu that was going around and she needed help and her mom needed to know and—_

"_Willow."_

_She gulped another breath and turned around. Xander had offloaded his passenger on a pair of orderlies, who were putting her on a stretcher as a woman in a nurse's uniform bustled over._

"_Keep an eye on her? And call in Giles – I don't think Angelus is done with tonight yet."_

_Faced with those eyes in that Serious-Face, all flatness and resignation and _tired_, she found once again that she could do nothing but nod._

_He nodded back and walked away without another word._

…

_It was like another epiphany._

_A little voice somewhere in the back of his head, one of the many that had been poking at him, pointed out that he should be worried. After all, words like 'epiphany' surely had no relevant place in the vocabulary of Xander Harris. And probably neither did words like 'relevant'. Or 'concussion', one which he was pretty certain he had a light version of._

_He ignored it, just like all the other voices. With the Serious-Face on, he found it even easier than usual. And the situation fit, so he kept it up all the way home… after a brief detour back to the graveyard where he'd encountered Willow, Buffy and Angelus, to reclaim the take-out he'd originally stepped out to pick up._

_He wasn't too worried about Buffy. Buffy was the Slayer, with Slayer healing included – he was sure it was going to kick in the moment she was forced to rest for long enough. And Willow would get Giles and, he guessed Ms. Calender too if his foggy memories of the last time in hospital were right, and they'd keep watch over her in case Angelus tried anything else with her before she got better._

_Of course, there was the possibility Angelus might try something with _him_. In which case, Xander would be happy to see him. Or at least, the grenade he'd started carrying in his pocket would be happy to see him._

_(Yes, he'd had time to work through his last epiphany. That didn't stop the short version from counting.)_

_But he was hard-put to keep his attention on his surroundings, only his Soldier-Guy memories and the way they flowed into his Serious-Face (which unlike his Xander-Face, still _worked_, though maybe the concussion was helping with that) keeping him safe from ambush._

_Normally – heh, not even an hour ago, he didn't think he could've brought himself to care either way. But now things were different. Now he'd come to an important realisation that had managed to elude him for the past week:_

_He had _killed_ half of the Scourge of Europe._

_Not with any fancy powers. Not even with any run-of-the-mill Joe Schlub powers. No. He'd won because he had nothing left to lose. He'd lost his friends, he'd lost his girlfriend, he'd lost his family, he never had a future to start with. He'd even lost his Purpose…_

…_or so he'd thought._

_He was going to lose his Purpose, and that would be the end of any part of him worth calling Xander. He just knew it, the 'meh' spoke of it as inevitable. But, he hadn't lost it _yet_._

_More: he'd just held off the _rest_ of the Scourge of Europe. Punched him in the head and kicked him in the nuts, and only a blind swing on Angelus's part had put him off for long enough to swear vengeance and get away._

_He could still help. Not for long, because he was alone now and soon his Harris luck would strike true one last time and that would be the end of him – but if his end was coming anyway…?_

_Only, Ms. Calender changed everything. Because if she was back in, then that meant they were working on the soul curse. And that meant they wanted to bring Angel back. And that meant that he only had a little more time to kill him…_

_Until the second half of the epiphany caught up with his mental lag, and he walked on only by automatic as exhausted neurons sparked like fireworks and danced a staccato on his retinas._

…_Or _capture_ him._

_It was a long shot, not even worth calling a Hail Mary. It was more like a swansong, like going out with a bang instead of a whimper. Hell, if things went wrong – and they probably would, with his luck – he'd be going out with a _literal_ bang._

_And if he somehow pulled it off? Well… maybe Willow and Buffy and Giles and the others might spare him a fond thought or something, wherever he ended up. (Probably hell, probably one of the special hells with his luck, the pessimistic voice warned.) (Maybe he'd even be forgiven, another voice whispered hopefully.)_

_Xander tuned out the voices again, and decided it was worth trying however it turned out. There were some military supplies he'd stashed away after the Judge; they might be useful now. He'd need some tranqs though… But Giles had some, and he was fairly sure the librarian hadn't stopped hiding his spare keys in the same place since he'd been around. Yeah, maybe grab the air-rifle too. Hadn't he bought an air-pistol after the last full-moon?_

_Oh, and he'd need to try for some sleep while he was at it. Unless Angelus got impatient and decided to firebomb his house. In which case…_

"_Meh." Spoken with satisfaction, for once. His course was set, and all he had left to lose was nothing worth having._

—ox-oxo-xo—

"She had the flu or something, right? Is she feeling better now?"

"Yes, she's fine now. Would've been better sooner if…" Joyce ground to a halt, clenching her jaw shut.

"Angelus. I know—"

Her control snapped. "_YOU_, you…you _bullheaded_ young man! Buffy was fretting herself to death, worrying about _you_! Your parents were killed and you disappeared for a week! Did you think she wouldn't _care_? _Do you really think so little of her_?"

Joyce stopped, panting and trying to reel herself back under control. This was not the time, and _definitely_ not the person she wanted to be yelling at. She closed her eyes, took more deep breaths… and, when she opened them, found herself looking directly into Xander's eyes for the first time in her entire visit.

Seeing the haze and the numbness slowly fading into confusion.

And then into utter shock.

"But…why?" His voice shook. All this time it had been cracking, rasping and slurring. But it hadn't shook. "Why would she…" He sounded so lost, so small, so… "After all I…what?"

And then she watched his face crumple.

Her simmering fury with Mr. Giles, her confusion and need to find answers and hear the rest of Xander's story, her distrust of Angel, her exasperation with Buffy's dysfunctionally…_teenage_ friends, her lingering embarrassment and guilt over her behaviour and attitude concerning Xander both less than two weeks ago and just a few days ago, even her desperate worry over her daughter… Just for a few minutes, it all ceased to matter. Because Joyce Summers dared any mother who was worth the title to stand in the face of…of this _anguish_, on the face of one of her child's best friends, and do anything other than what she did at that moment: She got up, went over and held him while the distraught young man weeped all over her, choking out his loss and remorse and uncomprehending cries of _why-won't-it-stop!_ to an uncaring universe.

That said, it was probably a good thing she'd accidentally knocked some of the sensors loose. If nothing else, the medical staff were better trained to deal with calming the increasingly hysterical young man down than she was.

* * *

><p><strong>Ending AN:** …I'm trying to remember – has Xander actually broken down crying anywhere in canon? If you're wondering why Xander got emotional at the end, the reason is that the 'meh' got drowned out for a bit under his realisation of the magnitude of his error - _again_. I plan to go into this in more detail later, but it's useful to know this much for now.

Anyway… Next instalment will deal with the Angelus takedown, and will be up in the next few days. Hope you enjoyed this one, notwithstanding the gratuitous angst! Until then…


	3. Master Vampires Are Still Idiots

**Disclaimer:** Joss, M.E. etc., still not me.

**Number:** 3/6 (probably)

**Warning:** _moderate_ language, _moderate_ violence, gratuitous over-use of the term 'meh'.

**A/N:** Longer chapter here. Coulda cut it up I guess, but… yeah, didn't wanna.  
>While here, a grateful thanks to <strong>Starway Man<strong> for the reviews…as well as a detailed reply: _Regarding the Cordelia critique – nice catch! A little more on Cordelia's frame of mind, which should help clarify things, in Ch4… though honestly, I could _use_ some good feedback on my Cordelia, because I'm not particularly practiced with her POV. (Oh, and as for Jasmine's opinion? On the one hand, divergences don't necessarily change everything – on the other, Jasmine's track record clearly indicates that she's just as vulnerable to fatal assumptions as the puny lower beings she manipulates…)_

**Feedback:** Again, much appreciated… Especially if it's useful as **Starway Man**'s!

* * *

><p><strong>Defaced, Derailed and Divergent<strong>

**Chapter 3: Meh! (or, Gloating Master Vampires Are Still Idiots)**

—**ox-oxo-xo—**

It took some little time, along with a minor top-up on the prescribed pain-relievers, for the nurse to get Xander levelled off again. This suited Joyce well enough, because it gave her some little time to find a ladies' room and recentre herself, and then find a vending machine and something resembling coffee, and consider something that she hadn't yet been able to think too deeply about.

When she returned, Xander was once more atypically remote, though she supposed the drugs were a more significant reason for that now. But he did give her a small smile tinged with gratefulness and embarrassment for a moment.

This time, she decided to backtrack first, letting him refocus on more neutral details and learning of them herself. Joyce remained careful not to prod too hard, but was able to learn (among other snippets) about Xander being able to stake Drusilla because she was distracted feeding on him, and that he'd successfully dusted Spike because the vampire had been holding himself up with one arm and the other was busy applying a chokehold. (Oh, and that he'd been picking up some takeout when he'd run across Buffy, Willow and Angelus. Joyce had to restrain herself from a tongue-lashing when she heard that.)

There, that would keep Mr. Giles happy. The 'Scourge of Europe' which consisted of Angelus, Drusilla, Spike and Darla (Angel's sire, the 'schoolgirl' who had attacked her _ala_ 'barbecue fork' early last year, and who Angel had ended himself later) had reputedly killed thousands in their heyday – that they had effectively been wiped out was no doubt something that would have stuffy old Englishmen aplenty toasting it with brandy and cigars, or whatever they did over there.

Soon, though, the time came for Joyce to get the rest of Xander's tale.

—ox-oxo-xo—

"So…Angelus."

Xander nodded fractionally. "What d'you know 'bout vampires?"

Joyce blinked at the apparent segue. "They're evil? Burn in sunlight or holy water? What do you mean, Xander?"

"I mean, how they act."

"Um… again, evil?" She considered. "Monstrous? Barbaric?"

Xander huffed, with some small amusement. "Yeah, 'cause they are. But no, how they _act_."

"I'm still not understanding you, Xander?"

He sighed. "Y'know one of Buffy's biggest beefs? It's how _dumb_ they are, like… _cartoon villain_ stupid. She fights these things, and they throw _quips_ at each other. And hers are always better. S'why I call us Scoobies, you know? We solve mysteries and we fight monsters, and… heh. If it wasn't for the people dying, and her time being eaten up with fighting, and hidin' her powers…" Xander's features slacked out, in a way that seemed to convey an attempt to be serious – which was somewhat pointless, given the minuscule trace of humour that had laced his visage beforehand. "They ruin her life, and it's like they don't even take it seriously. She jokes around, has a laugh, but…I can tell it gets t'her…"

Her lips pursed as she mulled that over. Now that she thought about it, Buffy had never actually sounded that eager over the whole 'vampires' thing back after the Hemery fire. She'd actually seemed more put-upon than anything else.

That made sense to her, she decided. Buffy had always been a social person, and very much a '90's Californian teenager – she had also seemed resigned more than disappointed about the brevity of her cheerleading stint after they moved to Sunnydale. And Buffy's life always seemed to be incomplete without a dose of high-school drama. One only needed to look at her attraction to Angel to figure that out.

"But hey – it's good when you're fighting 'em," Xander continued. "The minions, anyway. Give 'em time to plan things out, that's when they're dangerous. But," now he began to look like he was getting more involved in the subject, "the main thing they get? _Complacent_."

Joyce tilted her head to show her interest. Or her puzzlement, because she couldn't quite pick where this was going.

"Did you know, Buffy knew exactly where Angelus was staying? Both times? And Angelus knew that?"

She blinked at him. Then she almost gaped as what he was saying sank in.

"…Yup. We left it alone 'cause…" Xander shifted absently, "…'cause then if he was doin' something stupid and apocalyptic like the Judge again, then we didn't hafta look too hard for 'im. And 'cause Buffy was still iffy 'bout killing 'im. An' 'cause… well, it was a big bunch of vamps in a factory. Whaddaya do – burn 'em out?"

She gave him a Look. "…I'm seeing burns, dear."

"Meh," he retorted with a threadbare shrug. "You're only in trouble if ya get caught."

"Or get trapped inside," she snapped back before she could stop herself.

He responded with his own Look.

Joyce subsided. It really had been a pointless argument.

"'Sides, Buffy's got school. Me? I had a whole day to set it up…"

—ox-oxo-xo—

_For Buffy and her friends, the first sign of Xander making a move that might have been found was the disappearance of a handful of weapons and other items from the book cage at the Sunnydale High School library in the early (sunlit) hours of the morning. In particular, the theft of an air pistol that Giles had indeed brought in shortly after the last full moon (for Oz's benefit), along with an entire case of tranquillisers to go with it, might have been a powerful clue._

_Sadly, Giles was on his way to work during Xander's entrance and exit, which had been accomplished through a visit to the (empty) principal's office to get the keys to the library, followed by a brief stop at Giles's current hiding place for the spare key for the bookcage. So it wasn't until shortly before lunch and his customary check for faults in the weapons collection that the Watcher noted what was missing._

_The next clue was a visit to Willy's Alibi Bar, which was just about to close up. Had there been anyone else on the premises, this might not have been a wise move. But there wasn't._

_So he simply opened the door, walked up to the bartender and pulled out two pistols. "If you tell me what I want to know, I'll shoot you." This he punctuated with a minimalist wave of the air-pistol, which was loaded with tranqs. "If you don't tell me what I want to know…" This time he indicated the other pistol, one from his army-base haul which looked rather more ominous, "…then I'll shoot you."_

_Hey, just because he was borderline-suicidally depressed didn't mean he'd neutered his sense of humour. Needless to say, Willy had confirmed that Angelus had recently moved his lair to another factory (their previous lair having been Drusilla's choice, and abandoned a few days after her demise simply because Angelus regarded it for all its positives as too damn flammable), and that the Slayer knew where it was as of before her brief sickness, and that he'd heard nothing about Angelus moving anywhere else._

_The next thing Willy knew, the door had been kicked in and Buffy Summers was shaking him like a rag doll and demanding answers. Also needless to say, Willy shat himself (though he blamed that one on the tranquilliser)._

_There were a couple more clues, which were far less likely to have been found – and indeed they weren't._

_One of Sunnydale's major selling points to new residents was the relatively wide variety of amenities and attractions for the recreational dollar. A respectable sized zoo, both regular and mini-golf courses, a fairly interesting museum, a country club… not to mention its own small airport – Sunnydale prided itself on having at least one of everything, or at least having one of everything a short distance away, if it could possibly manage it. And among these entertainment amenities, another available pastime to while away a few hours was the team sport known as 'paintball'._

_Fortunately, Spike had been in somewhat of a hurry when he slaughtered the in-residence Harrises, and the pair of minions who tossed the upper floor looking for valuables hadn't found enough time to be thorough about it. As such, Xander had been able to dig up a little over eleven hundred dollars, in the form of his road-trip fund. (The fact that he could have stayed in a motel for a few weeks with that had, at the time, simply not occurred to him.) As such, he was able to buy outright one of the more worn models of 'paint-rifle', a short-barrelled type with a large, deep funnel reservoir the user could unscrew the top off of to toss in new paintballs by the handful, for two hundred dollars. For another two hundred (half up-front), the guy who sold him the paint-rifle promised to add whatever liquid Xander supplied to the paintball pellets, as long as it wasn't acid or napalm or whatever._

_This agreed, Xander then took advantage of another of Sunnydale's civic plenitudes: he used his father's car to visit over twenty churches, and helped himself to most of the holy water in their bowls. Then bought another few bottles at one of the bigger churches. By the time the clerk had filled Xander's pellets with the supplied water (with a strange look at his young customer), it was almost eleven-thirty._

_Xander stopped at the service station, filling up the tank. Then he drove back home, promptly siphoned off three-quarters of the tank, and used the excess to fill every empty or mostly-empty bottle of booze he could find (with some of his mom's liquid soap squirted in for extra cling-factor), loading them up in crates lined up in the car's trunk._

—_ox-oxo-xo—_

_Rupert Giles stopped, frowning. Then he quickly, carefully looked around the library. Then he quickly grabbed a wooden training sword from where it leant out of sight against a filing cabinet and headed for the stacks._

_The library was empty. As he'd thought, but best to be certain. This ascertained, he hurried back to the book cage. Again, it was as he'd thought._

_Nothing appeared to be _missing_ at first glance. But some items had been moved about, left in different positions. And…and the spare key for the book cage was not in the same position he'd put it down in._

_Rupert sighed. It was somewhat of an annoyance when Buffy did this. He gave the clock on the far wall a glance, and noted that he had some few minutes to find out what she'd appropriated and whether she had returned it before she and her friends appeared for lunch as they usually did, briefly at the least, to check in if nothing else._

_Or rather, those who were not absent. Xander was… unavailable. Out of reach. Absent, in fact – according to Principal Snyder, the bereaved young man would return next week. It would be more than two weeks in total before Rupert saw him next, an…unsettling realisation given that it would be the longest time without his presence during school term since he and Willow had attached themselves to the fight against the demonic._

_Not that he had been inactive in that fight during that absence. To all accounts, Xander had somehow managed to add the bloody annoyance known nowadays as Spike to his tally of victories. Or at least, that was the conclusion that Willy's clientele, as well as Angelus, had arrived at. Buffy's former paramour had reportedly even sidelined his campaign against the girl who had unwittingly freed him to find the boy who had killed them. It was unwise to rely overmuch upon the specific accuracy of such rumours – Rupert himself was under no illusion as to Angelus's continued focus on Buffy, most likely sending out a few minions to attempt to find Xander and thinking no further on the matter… although that might well have changed after Xander's solitary appearance since leaving the hospital to attend to his affairs in the wake of his parents' deaths. Nonetheless, that Drusilla and William had both died was virtually certain, and that Xander had somehow been responsible for both deaths was almost as certain, if for no other reason than because the other two candidates for said deaths (Buffy and, to a lesser extent, Rupert himself) knew full well that they had done no such thing._

_At some point, once he returned, Rupert would need to have a private talk with Xander. Whatever incomprehensibly adolescent American melodrama had occurred between him and his friends could not be allowed to put his Slayer's life in such jeopardy again. While it was refreshing to see Buffy being so dedicated to her calling, that manic pattern of behaviour had been indirectly responsible for laying Buffy low with that dreadful illness. She had only left the hospital yesterday morning – he did not wish to see her return there for a long while, thank you very much._

_In any case – Rupert had been about to recheck the equipment for wear and tear, and see if anything was still missing. Time to stop woolgathering and get to it._

_When Buffy and Willow walked into the library seven minutes later, it was to find Rupert Giles shouting to himself, "Damn and blast! What were you _thinking_, Xander?"_

—_ox-oxo-xo—_

_The last clue was found, but only some time after the afternoon's events. Xander sat down, noted the lengthening shadows as it hit three o'clock, and jotted down a brief note to tell the others what would happen, in case he failed._

_Leaving it cello-taped to the T.V. screen in the living room, Xander rounded off his arsenal with two sharp-ended crucifixes, a box-cutting knife and a broken-off broomstick handle with a sharply splintered end and another crucifix glued onto the other end. Oh, and another grenade, a…special grenade. And one more contingency taped to his wrist. Not the gun, though – it wouldn't exactly work for what was coming. Most of the military stuff, he'd realised after having thought about it, was simply too much of a liability._

_Ready as he could be, he drove away._

—ox-oxo-xo—

Joyce listened with the curiosity of an ignorant layperson as Xander dispassionately rattled off his preparations. One thing that struck her as a little strange was the disconnect between the level of detail provided – almost what she might have expected about a military fanboy (Buffy had dated one once, but had been more than somewhat unimpressed with the way he'd chatted about guns, helicopters and tanks for over half-an-hour with Hank instead of paying attention to _her_) – and its delivery, told without even an ounce of enthusiasm.

"The way you talk about those…weapons…" She sighed. All sorts of uncomfortable terms had been popping up this morning. "Are they, um, unusual or something?"

Xander blinked muzzily, and thought for a moment. "Mostly, yeah."

He fell into himself for nearly twenty seconds, until Joyce almost cleared her throat. But then he refocused, and turned out to have been mentally rehearsing how to explain. "Most of the stuff we use – well it's Giles' stuff. Swords, crossbows, rare books even; kinda hard to get that when you're underage an' unemployed. An' all that stuff… can't pay much bein' a library guy. So where's _he_ get it?"

Joyce found herself nodding thoughtfully. "From that, Council." She frowned, thinking it through a little further. "It's…all traditional. Antique, even." The books, that was straight-forward – as with artwork, originals were always more valuable, as copies invariably lost something in translation. Weapons might not have been Joyce's forté, but she knew that most of today's swords tended to be showpieces more than tools, due to their mass-produced manufacture. Presumably that logic held for other weapons, though she did imagine that crossbows were far more advanced nowadays. "Made to last…?"

"Yep. And that's good, if you're a Slayer – they learn _fast_. Or a Watcher, wi' the trainin' and the books. For anyone else? Nah, not really. Buffy 'n Giles – give me an' Willow swords, an' watch 'em twitch." Xander snorted. "As for the holy water – 'at's pricey, if you need a lot. An' then there's Angel…"

"…Who can't use holy water."

"Or fire. Vamps are flamm'ble – hence the Molotovs. So me, Will, Oz, Cor? We use stakes, crosses, maybe a crossbow if we 'ad time to load one first. Maybe a supersoaker or something, 'cause they don't splash so much, less waste. And guns? don't even get Buffy _started_ on guns. Usually not worth it anyway," Xander finished.

—ox-oxo-xo—

_As far as factories for an increasing number of vampires went (Angelus had been busy replenishing numbers), there were far worse choices._

_There wasn't much in the way of windows anywhere apart from the office areas, which were situated to the north side. The south half, mostly an open space with an enclosed loading dock on the east side, was nice and cluttered with machinery and conveyor belts and gave places to hide in case of ambush – _but_, and this was important to note, not with flammable materials like Drusilla's lair had been. (While Buffy had been kind enough to refrain from coming along and burning the warehouse down, Giles could not exactly be relied on to do the same; hence, Angelus had greenlit the move almost as soon as news of Drusilla and Spike's deaths had been received. Best to be prepared, after all, just in case Ripper started feeling opportunistic…) There were manholes in the street on the north and west sides. Best of all, the only direct access into the main floor area from outside was behind a dogleg at the southern corner of the west wall – which cut down the above-ground avenues for escape, but the underground access in the loading dock area was a better option for that anyway._

_All Xander knew about, apart from that it was a small-ish meat packing plant once upon a time, was that access door. Willow would have been able to get the floor plans and egress paths and so on, and Giles and Buffy could have knocked up plans for ambush at the places the vamps might flee. But he didn't have them for this op, and he couldn't get them. If he could have, it would be a different op – one with a much better chance for survival, if only a slightly higher probability for mission success._

_(Xander found himself wondering if this was what Buffy felt like, before going down alone to face the Master. Then he shook it off, wrapping the Soldier-remnants tighter around himself. Thinking like that could get him deader than Buffy had been…and a failed mission.)_

_Nonetheless, he felt that access door had possibilities. Near as he could tell, he had somewhere between an hour and ninety minutes before the sun sank far enough for the west manhole to be used as an escape route for those within. Assuming that there wasn't one within the warehouse itself – but there were things he could do for that, too._

_After making two haphazard circuits around the warehouse, Xander pulled the car over across the road, popped the trunk, and unloaded the three crates of Molotov cocktails along with some other supplies onto a prominently sunlit patch of pavement next to the warehouse wall, negligently tossing a tarpaulin over them to protect them from unhealthily inquisitive eyes. He also tore off a strip of duct-tape and stuck a small object to the wall next to the door at chest-level. Then he hopped back in the car, drove around to the north side and brought the car to a stop with one tyre sitting directly on top of the manhole cover. If he left the car there for too long, it might be a problem…assuming he cared. Or was alive to care, by the time his self-appointed mission was done. As it was, he simply removed the sparkplug and pocketed the keys, tooled up for his initial assault and walked back around to the southwest door._

_With no regard whatsoever for prior warning, Xander took out a prybar and forced the access door open, finding himself in front of a wall that served as a windbreak/sunbreak for the factory floor. It looked like the small enclosure had once been a washstation, but fortunately the sinks and grille-flooring appeared to have been torn out long ago. Noting the changed elevation for drainage from the starting area as a trip hazard to watch out for, he stepped back out for a moment to pick up the broom handle and leave it leaning against the protruding inside wall, directly in the sunlight, and then commenced the assault._

_What followed next was a game of poke-the-lion that went on for nearly twenty minutes. Xander would hug the outer wall and tag anyone he saw with the paint-rifle, making certain to step forward into the warehouse a little way once he'd cleared the dogleg. The first time, he got lucky and managed to time a left-dodge-and-push, leaving the first lookout who'd run forward screaming as he was caught in the afternoon sunlight blasting through the open door. The second lookout had also run over in an effort to catch the intruder, but stopped at the sight of mortal danger to him. Xander got lucky again, distracting that one with a (missed) close-range shot directly to the face as he made to retreat, and was able to lunge forward and stab him through the heart with the broom-handle._

_From there, progress devolved to a battle of attrition. On the vampires' side, they had the advantage of superhuman reflexes and a fair amount of cover in the form of machinery, which meant that more than half the time, Xander's 'paintballs' would miss…unless Xander managed to fake them out, which he tried as often as possible. On the attacker's side, apart from the relatively safe ground, he had the advantage of his enemies' increasingly short tempers; while head-shots might have been more effective strictly in terms of damage, it was far easier for Xander to aim for centre-of-mass… or more strictly, _lower_ centre-of-mass. On five occasions one or more bloodsuckers, driven to inarticulate fury by stinging payloads of holy water uncomfortably close to the genital areas, recklessly charged forward the moment that Xander left the patch of sunlight – at which point he would hold off as long as he could and then dart back and snatch up the broom-handle again. One vampire charged right past him into the sunny patch, two more flinched in the face of the cross on the blunt end of the broom-handle and fell to a quick reverse-and-stab, two more managed to fall back with stab wounds after his initial thrust missed, and another was stupid enough to stand there gloating after the first missed thrust only to take three doctored paintballs to the face and die with the second thrust._

_Not that Xander escaped entirely unscathed. One of the speedier vamps scored a glancing rake across his left shoulder while he was pulling back from dusting one of her compatriots before managing to dodge a reflexive shot and backpedal to safer range. Another, rather larger leech nearly surprised him by way of a horizontal swing with a long-stemmed, rusted meathook, which flashed by Xander's face so closely that it carved a jagged notch a millimetre deep across the very tip of his nose as Xander went for a broom-stab. (Fortunately that had been the gloater who bought it immediately thereafter, and Xander found the time to scoop it up and toss it out the door after retreating.) And the vamp trapped in the sun had gone berserk trying to get back past him, with Xander taking a heavy blow to the outer left thigh as he bullrushed him back and staked him on his own way to safety._

_Eventually Xander ran out of holy water pellets. So he quickly shoved the door right against the wall, wedged it there, and stepped outside for a minute. When he returned, it was with a newly filled container of pellets, and a clinking carrybag with the strap slung across his chest._

_Angelus's forces had not been idle. Now a number of them had taken to the thin cleaners' walkways of the factory's upper reaches._

—_ox-oxo-xo—_

_Buffy hurried out of Willy's bar, meeting with the others out past the front entrance. She was pale, her features grim and tight with worry, and tinged still with the tightly controlled rage she'd given the bartender just a light taste of in her quest for information._

"_It was Xander," she ground out. Her eyes prickled and tried to tear up, but there was no _time_ for that! Snyder, with his customary impeccable timing, had already cost them hours by making sure they couldn't just cut out of school early (which in turn was a large part of why she was so pissed off). "He's headed for Angel's new lair."_

_Willow whimpered and swayed on her feet, Oz stepping in to steady her. Ms. Calender's lips thinned as she went through her purse again, rechecking her weapons. Giles blanched. "We need to hurry," he told them, already leading the way back to the cars._

_Buffy quickly placed the docklands factory in relation to Willy's. It was close, at least close enough. "I'll meet you there," she snapped, already heading off at a running pace that would leave Olympic sprinters straining to keep up, and piling on more speed as she went._

—_ox-oxo-xo—_

_At first, it was more of the same. Vampires in general tended to rely on their demonic strength and speed in any combat situation, which meant that there was a shortage of tailormade weapons to hand within the factory's walls. So the vamps above would angle for a downward leap, or try throwing things at him from on high._

_It was an added distraction, certainly, but Xander's focus had already shifted. The vampires making a move for the higher ground indicated that someone had taken control of them – and with Spike (and to a lesser extent Drusilla) being dust, there were few options left to pick on who might be able to lead nearly thirty vampires plus the seven he'd taken out._

_On his third provocative dash, he caught a glimpse through his peripheral as he was darting back for the sunny patch. Only a glimpse. But Angelus was there, leaning with his back against the wall next to the open roller-door into the loading dock area and watching his scurrying with smug amusement._

_So far, so good._

_His face blank with automaton-like resolve, Xander spared not even a glance in Angelus's direction on the fourth dash – he'd seen enough on previous forays for his needs. As such, he stopped for just long enough afterwards to duck around the doorframe and fiddle with the jet-flame lighter stuck on the outside wall._

_When Xander reappeared three seconds later, the first thing he did was peg a lit Molotov at the largest group in front of him. The surprise was virtually total – of the nine vampires standing in that group, six were splashed and five caught on fire._

_His next move also took the assembled defenders by surprise – instead of retreating, Xander dashed forward directly for the group he'd targeted. Another Molotov was grabbed. This one was unlit, but Xander threw it to the ground directly in the path of a panicked vampire who was attempting the 'stop, drop and roll' routine to put out the flames. The minion went up like a Roman candle with a high-pitched scream, which Xander took advantage of by repeating the move with another unlit Molotov and another rolling minion…_

…

_Angelus watched the boy with a certain tolerant exasperation as he pulled his newest trick, made only slightly wary by the firebombs. If there were any more other than the ones in that little bag they were stashed near the door, so he couldn't use too many at once; and, Harris had already used three of them to get not even ten yards in, and still had nearly fifteen more to come with only…two bottles left, by the size of the carry-bag. At this kind of range Angelus could probably _catch_ anything the boy tried throwing at him, and hurl it right back. And if worst came to worst, there was an uncovered pit that led into the electrical maintenance passages not four yards behind him. And a loaded crossbow not _two_ yards behind him, sitting on a crate through the portal to the next section. Harris had not a hope in hell of pulling off anything worth the effort._

_Really, what was the point? Give it a couple hours and the shadows would be long enough to come around behind him. Of course Harris likely knew that – he'd demonstrated _some_ level of working brain with his approach so far, despite the horribly bright, oversized shirt he was wearing contradicting that – which meant he'd have to pull back within the hour. And with the smell of that gasoline, it would be the work of _seconds_ to follow his scent back to wherever he was staying and return the favour._

_It occurred to him that Harris could be aiming for exactly that, angling for an ambush. Angelus mentally shrugged at that – it was obvious he'd have to move again at this point anyway, maybe to that stone mansion on Crawford he'd been thinking about checking out himself when he had the time, so he could afford to just have his minions track Harris back to a general area and then wait for a short while._

_Sure, he might kill off a few more of his minions in the time he had left, but that could be fixed with a couple days – and the payback would be all the sweeter when it came._

_And best of all: there was no Summers, and there would be no Summers. Not in time, anyway. Because the Devil would set up shop and sell sno-cones to passing angels before _Summers_ gave Harris leave to try killing him like this—_

…

…_And then crouching practically _in_ the flames of his first firebomb, Xander pulled out the air pistol and fired three shots at Angelus' position._

_The first one hit, just a couple inches to the right of dead centre of mass._

_The second one followed the first's path, winging him in the junction of left arm and shoulder as he dodged – the wrong way, away from the doorway._

_The third was nowhere close. Xander was just glad that even _one_ had landed, let alone two. But he'd not trust his success to that kind of dosage. So he whirled to one side, tugging out his fourth firebomb and lighting it from the second burning puddle of gasoline as he shoved the pistol back in his pants with his scorched right hand, and spun the rest of the way around to discourage anyone else from getting close before side-arming the Molotov cocktail at the far doorway—_

_And then the Harris luck struck._

_The bottle – a Jack Daniels bottle, he acutely remembered later – tumbled through the doorway and hit the lip of the open manhole beyond, severely endangering anyone looking to escape into the sewers _that_ way. That much went to plan. (In fact it was one hell of a throw, one that he'd only managed to pull off because the Soldier's skills had been leaching more and more into him the longer he fought within the chaos-birthed construct's mental shroud.)_

…_And a crossbow bolt slammed under Xander's left shoulder, just a couple inches in from the armpit. That was _not_ part of the plan._

_Nor was Angelus zigzagging towards Xander's position as he exhibited the excellent vampiric speed that had allowed him to dash through the door and grab the crossbow despite jumping the wrong way to start off with, tossing the emptied weapon at his head (it missed only because Xander unaccountably failed to stumble and stagger backwards with his injury as Angelus had predicted, whizzing past him at shoulder-height). The master vampire lunged to grab him by the throat, pulled him forward out of the flames, spun and pinned him against his cold chest, facing the twenty-five or so remaining minions as Angelus stage-whispered into Xander's left ear from behind:_

"_Ooh, nice try – you _almost_ got me."_

_Xander froze, harnessed adrenaline of The Moment hammering his mind into ice-cold clarity even crisper than it had been over the entire assault on Angelus's lair. He'd hit the bastard right on. Would Angelus have been wearing something to stop that…? No, he was a _vampire_, and just as lazy and complacent and all-round _stupid_ as the rest of them, which meant— ohh, the _second_ shot must have missed, or at least have not hit deep enough to stick._

_That was good. For at least the next few minutes, there was at least one dose of fast-acting sedative running through Angelus's system. That'd dull his response times._

_And as unwise and unplanned and well-entrenched in 'deep shit' territory as his current position was, there were at least a few upsides to it. Three immediately came to mind._

_First: Angelus was gloating instead of just snapping his neck. This was never healthy for the bad guy – _never_._

_Second: Angelus had obviously called dibs. So right now, it was just him he had to deal with._

_And, third: while Xander might not have planned for this _exact_ situation, he _did_ happen to have a couple contingencies in place which could still work._

_In the meantime, the youth scrabbled at the hand locked round his neck with his right hand, a button on his shirt popping loose in his panicked struggle._

"_There's a lesson in this, though. You were out of your league, boy – right from the very start!"_

_His captive tried to fall forward, only succeeding in hunching his shoulders forward maybe an inch, pressing his back into his captor and pressing his own neck into the unyielding grip holding him fast, and jarring his right arm to be tangled in his shirt under his left armpit. Angelus took advantage of his straits, biting down to suck away a pint or two of his life, of his resistance. Just to take the edge off the incomplete drugging, let him finish his evil gloating monologue without worrying about interruption or an inconvenient naptime._

_(His shoulder and ribs and lungs and neck and throat screamed in complaint as the edge of his hand bumped into the protruding crossbow bolt. He ignored them just as he'd ignored all the other voices. The 'meh' was supreme in its indifference.)_

"_Now _Buffy_ – well, _she_ might've had a chance. She's the heroine of this story, after all. _You_?" Angelus chuckled maliciously. "You're not even the sidekick. You're just a walk-in extra," the master vampire's voice curled with ridicule, "throwing a pointless little tantrum—"_

_The pubescent fool jerked spasmodically, trying to prise his arm and neck free from their traps without bumping the bolt again. The next button down ripped out of its eyehole and the laceration at his neck scratched open wider on Angelus's hovering fangs, but now his hand was bumping the bolt from below and he was too far gone in his mindless struggle to notice let alone take advantage and withdraw the hand to try something smarter – say, tugging loose the bolt, or trying for the air-pistol tucked in his belt._

_(his head was getting light and gravity was singing its curtain call and the end was waving its flags in dizzying unpatterns and 'meh', all the Faces were screaming and 'meh', for the 'meh' swallowed everything and spat out 'meh'—)_

_Xander blinked, beginning to realise that he was close to greying out._

_(for 'meh' was eternal. It was inevitable.)_

_And that was unacceptable._

"—_because _I had her first_."_

_('Meh' was patient. 'Meh' could wait a little while longer. There was something left to do._

_A mission, a Purpose left to fulfil.)_

_His right arm drifted out of his left armpit, and raised and twisted up to hover by his right ear. Thumb pointed straight-out left as if pointing to himself. Scorched-red fingers curling around a lumpy, bulbous, dull metallic egg._

_At least a few minions recognised the shape. A few more started retreating when they spied the tiny strand of metal folded over to form a needlehole atop two stalks, flying away to _ping_ on the factory floor._

_Angelus pulled back a little, to look around his captive's inconveniently vision-obscuring head and see what his minions were so alarmed about._

_And from the long, loose sleeve of Xander's _left_ arm, a four-inch syringe that had been strapped to the holster on his wrist until a few seconds ago swung back around the carrybag despite the agony of moving that limb to punch through Angelus's leather-clad buttock and inject an entire three capsules' worth of tranquilliser into his vampiric bloodstream… with a complimentary air bubble to kick it off. (Because after all, this contingency wasn't solely for dealing with _Angelus_…)_

_Xander snapped the needle's point off in Angelus's rump and dropped the syringe, reached up with his left hand, and removed the offending limb from his throat with a U.S. Army Corps C.Q.C. twist and twirl of the wrist that left the woozy vampire standing in front of him, blinking at the sudden turn of the tide…and the sedative, can't forget the sedative._

_Xander-Face might have gloated, possibly tried for a snappy comeback. _Any_ Face of the Xander might have gloated. But Xander was wearing no Face, not even Serious-Face because Faces broadcast hints and he could have afforded none. Acting out a mostly-faked panic for a few seconds did not a Face make._

_People always forgot what it took, to wear one's heart on their sleeve on the Hellmouth. Or maybe they just never realised what the term 'sleeve' might imply, if one thought about it the right way._

_So Angelus stared disbelievingly into Xander's bland, blank not-face as Xander's left hand let go and stretched and dipped and brought up the air pistol and put three more darts into his torso at less than a foot away without even the slightest twitch of resolve or pain or triumph. And then he dropped sideways, as seven doses of tranquillisers – an amount more than twice that required for an enraged _Oz_, an amount that might have staggered the Master – cast their own inarguable judgement._

_So Angelus slept. The last thing that he heard was the air pistol as it snapped into position over his body and spat the rest of the clip at his minions. And the last thing that he saw was the merciless, uncompromising gaze of his Defeat as it shifted from its victory to…to what? Its survival?_

_How could that gaze _care_? He couldn't see it._

_Was he missing something…?_

_So Angelus slept._

_**("This will be sufficient, brother."**_

"_**He will depart the mouth of Hell in his new due time and find his destiny. Yes, this will be sufficient, sister. Yet what of the Slayer, and that demonic sub-dimension?"**_

"_**Factors elsewhere will yet provide. Your actions will stand, interloper. However, we will **_**not****_ countenance further meddling in what must be. Now leave us."_**

"…"

"_**She will not listen, should she desire so, sister."**_

"_**We must be ever more vigilant, brother.)**_

…

_As it turned out, bottom-feeding vampiric minions went down just as easily as their human counterparts when enough sedatives were applied. Whether this was due to their lack of willpower, their physiology, the tranquillisers' potency or some other random quirk, Xander cared not in the least, beyond the fact that another six minions were down… That, and the result that it made the third part of his mission a little more likely to succeed. He had found Angelus. He had captured Angelus. Now he just had to _keep_ Angelus, until he could be collected._

_Xander remembered, and slammed his right thumb back down on the grenade's lever as he tucked the air pistol back away._

_His undead audience heaved a collective sigh of relief._

_Now, the mission was relatively straight-forward. Xander knew Giles and his routines well enough, at least as applied to the Sunnydale High School Library. The weapon-check was at lunch today this day of the week, so he could draft Xander, Oz and whoever else offered to help clean and sharpen them. And he'd taken the air-pistol from the book cage in full knowledge of this. So he just had to hold out until the cavalry tracked him down. It wouldn't take long._

_Or if it did, and he bled out before it got here… well, he did his best – and it was pretty damn good._

_That said, he _supposed_ he should maximise what time they had to play with. So he switched hands and kept the grenade held up high as he did his best to drag Angelus over towards the door he'd started from._

_But he'd underestimated his own exhaustion, now that The Moment was done. And the machinery that he'd vaulted and slid over on his way to where he was now, was going to be a lot more difficult to negotiate with a sleeping sack of vampire to deal with._

_Twenty-odd undead stared at him. He stared back. They were at an impasse. But not one that could last much longer. Only as long as it took the sun to drop a little further._

_Eventually something occurred to him._

"…_So. Is that manhole in the next room still on fire?"_

_There was scuffling behind him, as two minions argued over who'd go look. He made no comment other than to raise the grenade a little higher._

_Eventually a male voice called back. "Hey, it's not that bad, guys! If you just jump down…" another brief scuff of shoe on concrete and then on metallic grille-flooring, and then a slight pause before it finished from below ground level, "…it's all good!"_

_A lot of the tension lifted from the impromptu stand-off. The vampires now had the option of just saying 'screw this' and leaving whenever they liked. It was an attractive option, after watching the intruder take out over a dozen of them and capture their leader._

"_Right. Well, I got what I came for. And you'll probably wanna move house 'fore the Slayer catches up." Xander waited for the nigh-inevitable response, fishing around at his belt._

_It came from the left and above. "Yeah? Well what if we wanna wait around a—"_

_Xander's right hand withdrew from under his untucked shirt, holding up a second lumpy grey object. "The next one o' you who says that gets a grenade thrown at 'em."_

_The voice paused. "How many of those things d'you even have?"_

"_Is it really worth finding that out the hard way?" Xander countered patiently._

"…_Heh, guess not."_

_Twenty-odd vampires moved, some of them pausing to gather various keepsakes and valuables they wanted. Xander watched on as they fled one after another, down the manhole that was indeed only _slightly_ on fire (mainly on the far side, as that was where most of the gasoline had splashed…hmm, maybe his aim hadn't been _that_ good), some pausing again as if to threaten vengeance but thinking better of it when he just stared at them._

_Two minutes after the end of the stand-off, Xander was alone in the warehouse with one heavily drugged Angelus, five moderately drugged minions (one of them had been picked up and carried off, presumably by her sire or childe or lover or whatever, but no others had been bothered with), one patch of factory floor that was still merrily burning away, and a long list of accumulated injuries that were _really_ demanding attention now._

_Xander looked around very carefully, making completely certain that he was the only one there and awake. Then he negligently dropped the dummy grenade in his left hand to the ground, and carefully returned the other, very real grenade to his belt._

_The carrybag with the last Molotov was sat on the top of a machine as he dug out a leather pouch from his pants pocket, fishing out a handful of tranquilliser darts, and fed them into the pistol until there were twelve in there. One shot each went into the five minions and Angelus. Then again. Then fed the rest of the darts in, and returned it to his belt._

_Now… he supposed he should be doing something, though the exhaustion and the pain and the 'meh' were all getting pretty insistent._

_Fetching his paintball rifle from where he'd dropped it near where the first three Molotovs had gone off…_

_He did that. A few of the pellets had broken in the container, but it was just water anyway._

_Fetching his broom-handle and dusting the tranq'd minions with it. Maybe rolling them for cash or something…_

_He did that, or at least the dusting part. His left arm was going on strike now, and it was just too much effort to try running through their pockets. It was hard enough getting the thrusting motion right so the broom-handle didn't crumble as the dozing vamps did. Though, he did tug a dressy shirt off one of them, and shoved it under his own top at the shoulder to act as a crude compress for his bleeding neck._

_Fetching that crossbow… It was just over there, so it joined the last firebomb on the machine._

_Bringing in the rest of his supplies? Nah, too much effort. Moving his car? Probably not wise to leave Angelus unattended, or go wandering into shady areas outside where the vamps who'd just left might be waiting for a chance at payback. Tie up Angelus? With what? Anything that might work was too heavy – better just to keep shooting tranqs in him every so often. There were all kinds of things he could be doing, if he could just make the effort…_

_Meh. He was done. It was good enough. So Xander sat on a conveyor belt, leaning against a packing machine as he sat the paint-rifle to his right, kept the air pistol resting on his thigh and trained in Angelus's general direction, absently witnessed as the inner voices tailed off one by one into 'meh'-ful silence…_

_And waited for Buffy so that he, too, could sleep._

…

_The first thing she saw, was a car. It didn't look particularly familiar. But it was sitting in the middle of the road, unattended. And one of its tyres was parked directly on top of a round metal plate which must've covered a manhole._

_Xander had come here. And if he'd left, he hadn't taken the car with him._

_So sticking with the sun while she had it, Buffy dashed around the corner to the sunny west side, saw the open door and was right about ready to charge through in her haste when she noticed the stack of stuff next to the door._

_Buffy stopped, clawed herself back from the verge of panic, and decided she wasn't going through that door. The door could be a trap, especially with that dividing wall that hid the inside. But the stuff was interesting. Three crates of alcohol bottles, beer and whiskey and wine and vodka and others, each with a rag sticking out soaked in what her nose told her was gasoline and something that smelled like lemon-scented cleaner. A plastic bucket, with dozens of little clear marble-sized pellets in the bottom that rattled when she picked through them for a closer look. And – a little black fliptop case that Giles had told her to keep an eye out for, because it held the little sedative darts for the air pistol he'd gotten for Oz-watching, the air-pistol that Giles had found missing at lunch._

_She opened it up. Over half the darts were missing._

_Skipping the door, she backtracked a little instead…which was the most safety-first she could bring herself to stick to, because time was a-wasting! Through the abandoned northside offices, into the factory area, barging in with her stake up and ready for anything—_

"_Angel!"_

_There he was – lying face-down a few feet away from a burning patch of what must have been a firebomb, not moving. It had to be him, because Xander never wore leather pants. Noting peripherally that there really weren't any other vamps in the warehouse, Buffy dashed over to check on him._

_Strangely, he looked fine when she kicked him over with stake held ready. Apart from the bloody mouth, though that looked like he'd been feeding. And the little red darts stuck in him, three of them in his belly and another two in his right bicep that she should've noticed first because they'd been stuck pointing out in the direction she'd come from._

_He'd done it. Xander… Xander had _done it_._

_Buffy straightened, and went to whirl in a tight circle to scope the rest of the room—_

_There he was. Sitting on one of the conveyor belts, leaning against a machine, where another machine had obscured him from her entry point. The air pistol he'd used to bring down Angel was lying in a limp right hand on his lap, pointed vaguely in their direction, his eyes with heavy bags under them but never shifting from the vampire's spot._

_He was pale, unhealthily pale. So pale that if Buffy didn't know better, she'd say he might've been a vampire. But there was a long rod of wood under his hand, and there was a cross stuck on the non-pointy end, so that would be a big ol' reassuring nope on the undeadness. There were burns, his hands were red and blistering and the cuffs of his shirt and jeans and a big patch on his outer thigh were blackened with smoky smudges where they must've almost lit on fire. And there was blood, a _lot_ of it, some seeping down from the bunch of cloth at his neck and left shoulder, and the _crossbow bolt_ still sticking from his _chest_, and oh _god_—_

"_The others?" Xander murmured, his eyes still riveted on Angel. Buffy almost jumped._

_He was still there. He'd be all right. They'd be all right. They _had_ to be…_

"_They're on their way," she told him. As a matter of fact, she could hear Ms. Calender's car on approach. "They'll be here in a minute. Are you…"_

_She stopped. Obviously he wasn't._

_Outside, on the sunny side, first one car and then another pulled to a stop. When Buffy heard footsteps approaching, she called out, "In here, guys!" and carried on trying to decide what to do with herself. There was Angel on the floor, there was Xander on the machine, there were the others finding their way in, and there she was just _standing there_ and feeling her spirits flipping over and over between elation and worry and shame and panic and—_

"_Xander!" Willow shrieked, stumbling over to him with Oz following behind more carefully through the access door. Giles stepped over to Angel, checking his pupils for response on the off-chance he was starting to come around, and walked over to Buffy as Ms. Calender stayed there staring down at Angel with a loaded crossbow in hand._

_Giles' hand resting on her shoulder snapped her out of it. Angel wasn't going anywhere, and Ms. Calender wasn't going to ruin all her work on the soul curse by killing him. So she let Giles guide her over to Xander, who was ignoring them all and _still_ staring at Angel._

_Giles immediately started checking Xander over too. The bolt was left as it was, turning out to have probably missed his lung – not as bad as it looked from side-on. He softly cursed, though, when he saw what was under what looked like a silk shirt. "Oz, the first-aid kit from the car?" Oz stepped away and hurried out. In the meantime, he reached down with the hand that wasn't pressing down on the makeshift compress and rested his hand on the one holding the air-pistol._

"_Xander? It's over, you've done it. You're done now. Let it go," Giles told Xander, eventually managing to wiggle the gun out of Xander's hand – then firing twice into Angel before anyone else could even blink. "See? He's not moving. You've done enough."_

_After a few seconds, Xander blinked and looked down to where his left hand was fumbling lethargically in his pocket. He eventually managed to pull out a set of keys and a…sparkplug?, spilling them out onto the belt next to him._

"_For th' car," he mumbled. Then he rested his head on the machine behind him, and let his eyes loll around to look at the people surrounding him._

_There was a smile, a tired, horribly _sad_-looking thing that fell to nothing after barely a second, as if he couldn't be bothered holding it. A flash of vague satisfaction, which faded to distant puzzlement._

"_Huh, s'weird. Why're you crying?"_

_Buffy stared at him through blurring, burning eyes, transfixed at what sounded for all the world like an honest question._

_Eventually his eyes drifted shut with a breathed, "Meh, nothin' goes right," as Oz approached with the first-aid kit._

* * *

><p>Joyce Summers sat back as Xander fell silent, his tale finished.<p>

She had to admit, a part of her was very, very impressed.

Xander had gone in well-prepared, with plans and fallbacks and contingencies. Angel had belaboured the point about just how very dangerous vampires were, and how bad they could be to face even when you were prepared for them. Apparently they were three to four times as strong as humans for their size, and could be as fast when they wanted or remembered to be. They could be hurt, but they could ignore that pain if they remembered they weren't human, though it was harder with holiness, fire or sunlight. And they had no conscience, their only thought before committing the most sickening acts being whether they could get away with it. Xander, though, had helped to demonstrate just what a human could do, with the right planning and preparation – and some skill to go with it, as Xander had needed to stop at one point to explain about the Soldier that he'd been for a couple hours on Halloween last year. Much like with Drusilla and Spike, Angelus had underestimated Xander, and got unlucky. But unlike the earlier attacks, where dusting (she liked _that_ term, she decided – it helped to dissociate the act from the…death, she supposed, that it represented), yes _dusting_ Drusilla and Spike had almost been accidents, vague impulses of a moment – _this_ attack was planned and executed without the least bit of fuss, right from the start.

So yes, she was impressed and more than a little grateful that someone who'd fight like that, someone who'd plan like that, had chosen to help her daughter. More importantly, though – most important of all – Xander's tale had given her a better way to process that disconnect, that intellectual gulf, between the supernatural and herself.

Xander had acted – planned, prepared, fought and followed his own self-issued orders of the time – like a _soldier_. And he hadn't done anything that a well-trained soldier couldn't do, either. Just give a soldier like that the intelligence, and the equipment, and the mission, and a bit of courage and confidence, and that soldier could do what Xander had done. And she imagined soldiers rarely did that kind of thing alone anyway, at least not outside of Hollywood. A _squad_ of soldiers would have had far less trouble than Xander had.

The Vampire Slayer to defeat vampires and demons. Magic to defeat magic. Watchers, with their occult libraries and esoteric knowledge, to defeat stranger, more complicated threats. An entire unknown _world_, against which these were the only defences, the only defenders – and how could one mother cope in the face of all that? What did it even have to do with her, beyond her daughter being trapped in that world?

But a soldier could fight vampires and win. A professionally trained warrior for his country could fight the good fight against the supernatural, and come away victorious and alive. Joyce might never have been a soldier, she might not have known or talked with soldiers all that much, she definitely couldn't see herself _being_ a soldier. But soldiers were still far easier to understand than vampires and other monsters of the night.

It _could_ be fought. It _could_ be resisted. Humans weren't as helpless as they looked, if they wanted to be.

Humans could _win_!

_She_ didn't have to be helpless. Prudent, definitely. But there were a lot of things she could do, easily and without any great inconvenience to herself, to be safer. All of a sudden, dealing with the supernatural – or at least living with it – seemed to be a lot more manageable. Easier to understand. Easier to think of in relation to her, or at least to her daughter.

This had been _exactly_ what she needed, a way to put all this into perspective: Dangerous, but _not_ unbeatable. A fight that _wasn't_ just for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a strange creature that she still had a great deal of trouble thinking in the same person as her daughter – a fight that one of Buffy's friends had taken right to the enemy's doorstep, fighting as a human and with a human's advantages and weaknesses, and walked away from with the win.

She couldn't run, she couldn't hide. But she could fight. And, with her friends by her side, her mother suddenly found hope that Buffy could win – that they could _all_ win, and live.

_This_, Joyce decided, she could deal with.

…But she was still going to yell at Mr. Giles, and make Angel cringe for having the temerity to deflower her precious baby girl, and cry all over Buffy. No, now she could just do it without having to worry too much beforehand about saying or doing something she might regret later.

Right now though, she went over and kissed Xander on the forehead, and told him, "Thank you, Xander. You've given me what I need to help Buffy. And thank you so much for all the help you've given her, too."

Xander blushed a little, and smiled for a brief moment.

Well. That was one problem dealt with. Or at least one problem that would be dealt with later, after the aforethought screaming, squirming and sobbing.

That left another one.

Xander had gone in and done the job like a soldier. That didn't mean it wasn't a suicide mission to start with.

A big part of the reason Xander had won was simply because he hadn't _cared_ whether he'd live or die afterwards. His well-being had been important only insofar as it helped him complete his mission; his survival, irrelevant beyond hanging in there long enough to guarantee the win. Simply, he'd won because he'd fought well, but _also_ because he fought like a man with nothing left to lose but the battle itself.

Angel had not been the only one she'd talked to, about how to deal with Xander. Neither Buffy nor Willow had been of much help, though she could understand why – the circumstances they didn't think she'd believe (vampires just for starters!), the bits they didn't want her to find out about (the shunning, which explained just why the pair were feeling so guilty about it), along in Willow's case with the fact that even lingering on the thought still left her bursting into tears and blubbering unintelligibly.

Young Daniel, however, had quietly mentioned something he'd managed to catch from his randomly rambling conversations with his girlfriend. As both of her parents were psychologists, Willow had over the years picked up a seemingly endless succession of trivia about her parents' professions and the intricacies and difficulties involved. One such piece of 'trivia' was rarely told to their patients or their families, mainly for fear of upsetting or otherwise worrying them.

(Although, this was 'Oz'. So what the taciturn young man had _actually_ said that morning when she phoned him concerned a suggestion to look up detailed descriptions of depression, and that Xander getting 'better' might not turn out as well as it sounded. It was in her research, later that morning in the U.C.-Sunnydale campus library before coming to Sunnydale General, where she had worked out what Daniel was speaking of.)

In many suicide cases (successful or attempted alike) involving depressed people, the families afterwards had railed at all involved, crying that 'they were getting better, how did it go wrong?' and other words to that effect.

The short answer, was simply that they _were_ getting better.

The key to understanding _that_, lay in understanding that one of the biggest hurdles in recovering from depression was the apathy, the lack of motivation, and the _indecisiveness_ that came with it. The very worst levels of depression actually had lower suicide statistics than the more moderate cases, because the decision to kill oneself was just that: a _decision_, like any other. The worst of depressives were far more likely to just lie in bed and pine away (or in Angel's case, brood in lonely alleys and half-starve himself apart from feeding on the odd rat) than they were to slash their wrists. And 'pining away' didn't exactly count as suicide. For starters, it took a lot longer. And in certain cases, it was a lot more socially acceptable – her own grandmother, for example, had faded quickly after her elderly husband's death.

Xander had walked out of his house, encountering Drusilla, because that was just his routine – it was automatic, easier to do than to ponder not doing it. It wasn't until he'd rescued a feverish Buffy from Angelus in passing – again, an automatic action – and begun to comprehend that his friends might yet forgive him, that Xander had made the decision to attempt his self-appointed mission, even if it was about half a step up from suicide-by-vampire, to try earning that forgiveness.

When she'd thought about it, partly because of the recent behaviour and partly because of what Angel was telling her about him, she had wondered what Xander Harris had to live for. Family was… well, according to Angel: just, _no_. At one point, Angel commented, Angelus had toyed with the idea of wiping out Xander's parents himself – only to decide that it wasn't worth doing it. That pretty much said it all. Ambition? Xander really was a nice boy, but that was one of the things that annoyed her about him – his lack of it… though again, that might be because of his family. That pretty much left friends as the main thing, with the fight against evil (which still sounded somewhat ridiculous) on top of that.

The answer to this dilemma was deceptively simple, though parts of it didn't particularly appeal to her. A lot of it didn't appeal to her. But it _was_ simple, and there were good reasons for doing it.

—ox-oxo-xo—

"But, Xander? I need you to do something for me now."

Xander looked at her, blank and _almost_ uncaring.

"I need you to _keep_ helping Buffy. I need you to help her come home safe. Can you do that for me, Xander?"

Hope flashed in those blank eyes, for a single moment. Then they dimmed.

"…I'm a minor, Mrs. Summers. And Uncle Rory's got a criminal record. And the bank's takin' the house."

Joyce nodded. She had indeed caught that, along with the implications. So then she laid out her solution.

* * *

><p><strong>Ending AN:** Oy, 10K-plus words. Yikes. But it was leave a cliffy or leave it feeling unfinished without the cliffy. Good thing to remember for you other fic-writers out there – cliffies _do_ have a purpose, even if you hate doing them. But anyway, the next instalment will, again, be up in a few days.

(For those wondering why the impromptu psych-lesson near the end? Months ago, back when I was initially writing this, RL had just hit me with one of my best friends offing herself. The same questions should've been asked, but weren't because her previous impulsive 'cries for help' hadn't been taken seriously enough. (Well, _I_ did – but as far as I figured, opting out was always her call to make in the end.)  
>When I got round to blowing the dust off this fic, editing that section to fit was simply neater than leaving a hole there and making that point later. It was just a matter of adjusting the circumstances so that it fit at least a little better. Hopefully the suspension of disbelief stretches on this one, because it's pretty integral to Xander's personality (and Angel's, for that matter) as far as this fic goes.)<p>

A quick note on Xander-pairings, for those who can see where Joyce's solution is going and might be starting to wonder? …Yeah, don't worry too much. Any such pairings would be happening later on, as in after the fic's end. Possible hints, but gen for all intents and purposes. Xander's simply too damaged by this point to allow anything else.

So. Gratuitous angstossity aside – MERRY CHRISTMAS and Other Relevant Season's Greetings! Hope you enjoyed this latest instalment. Next time, the fallout…


	4. Medical Personnel Can Also Be Idiots

**Disclaimer:** Joss Whedon, M.E., etc.. Not me.

**Number:** 4/6

**Warning:** moderate language, nigh-on-parodic emo-ness in concert.

**A/N:** It has come to my attention that Xander's speech patterns might be construed as being Britishified. This is somewhat embarrassing and a bit annoying, as I deliberately tried to avoid this. Xander is being pretty heavily drugged, and slurring as a result – the apparently Spike-a-like speech-mode is an attempt to demonstrate this without descending into illegibility. Thanks extended to **The Fallen Sky** for pointing this problem out.  
>Much thanks to <strong>Starway Man<strong> (Buffy? Part pure-and-simple brainfart on her end, part the ongoing, kinda-cliqued lack of mental separation between Angel and Angelus; Joyce's epiphany? Thanks! I don't see anybody thinking the war can actually be _won_ instead of just being managed anywhere near enough) and **The Fallen Sky** (the Angelus-takedown, unrealistic? well, _yes_ but sometimes you just get unreasonably lucky. And Joyce? This version of her didn't have to deal with Buffy face-to-face immediately after finding out about vampires, so she managed to rein in her gut response for long enough to get answers from someone who she felt she owed - and who owed her) for their detailed and constructive reviews, as well as** Wonderbee31** for the encouragement.

**Feedback:** Even if it isn't as useful as what I've already received, it's always appreciated!

* * *

><p><strong>Defaced, Derailed and Divergent<strong>

**Chapter 4: …Meh. (or, Lackadaisical Medical Personnel Can Also Be Idiots)**

—**ox-oxo-xo—**

Xander's eyes flared again, more hopeful than before, that brightness lasting a little longer, and Joyce knew she'd made the right call.

Xander Harris could not be relied upon to make any effort at living for his own sake – not right now, and maybe not for ages to come. His friends, though? Near as she could figure, he'd lived for their sake for _years_. Which boiled the solution down to choosing the option that let him _stay_ with his friends, instead of being shuffled across the country to whatever relative would end up getting a year or so's worth of custody of him otherwise.

That his help in the good fight would make it more likely that Buffy would live as well, was a priceless incentive. That alone was worth shelving her lingering doubts over having Xander live under the same roof as her hormonal teenage daughter for the next… when _was_ his birthday, anyway?

Xander considered the idea, turning it over to see the catch. "And Buffy? What's she think of this?"

Joyce smirked. "Well… if nothing else, she's probably forgiven you for the Valentine's Day thing…"

—ox-oxo-xo—

"…So, that's what's happening," Buffy finished with a tired shrug.

Cordelia stared at her, blinking twice. As far as her now-habitual 'what might try to kill me _this_ week' updates went, that was a MAJOR one.

"…Huh." She shook herself. "Well, whatever. I'll just pretend he doesn't exist like I was already doing. That's as far as I'll give, though," she warned with a level glare. "I'm not obligated to care about his problems, they're not my business."

"That's not what I meant, Cordelia," Buffy protested.

The taller girl sighed. "Yeah, I know. It's just, I made my choice. I'm done with it." In the privacy of her own mind, Cordelia Chase might allow for the possibility of being just a teeny, tiny bit impressed at what Harris had pulled off. Well, pretty damn impressed actually – from what Buffy had been able to tell her, it wouldn't have been out of place as a heroic quest in one of the classic romance novels she secretly enjoyed on occasion. But then… It wasn't like Harris hadn't done brave, even heroic things before – even for her, even when he hadn't liked her! It was part of what had attracted her to him in the first place – and that same Harris had then tried to have her ensnared in a love spell just so he could hurt her. (That _she'd_ be the one to provoke that reaction didn't change that, especially when, after a couple weeks for the initial pain to fade, Cordelia couldn't bring herself to guarantee that she wouldn't do something to provoke him that far again. She was who she was, after all – just as he was who he was.)

Just because he'd done something so noble, didn't mean he couldn't do something so hurtful to her again. Or that she would refrain from poking at him until he went ahead and did it. No, she had made her choice – and despite the occasional twinge of regret, it was the right one to make. She _was_ done with it… which considering the sheer scale of the damage her bridge-burning had caused on his end, was a damn good thing.

Cordelia mentally shook herself. "Oh, and _you_? Congratulations and all, but no more letting Angel get that happy. Get me? I do _not_ need that kind of hassle in my life again!"

Buffy huffed her own sigh. "Yeah, yeah, I know," she mourned.

Cordelia's eyes softened, just for a moment, while the Slayer's gaze was down. Sure, she'd brought most of her problems down on herself, but… Well, Angel _was_ some fine salty goodness, and she couldn't really blame her for partaking. After all, Buffy going down that road meant that _she_ hadn't. "Well, whatever. At least the Slaying's going swell. Fewer distractions for my social life? I'll get behind that one!" Cordelia finished in farewell, walking out of the library.

…

Buffy slouched back to her seat with another sigh. Why was everything in her life so complicated nowadays? She wished she could get by with popping in every day or two to see what was going on like Cordelia was doing now. No, for her it just seemed to pile in whenever it felt like it.

And that was just the monsters. Add in her own screw-ups, and that was a recipe for _serious_ headaches.

If it wasn't one thing, it was another. On the plus side, Angel was back. On the minus side, Angel was back because his _curse_ was back. It was bad enough before, when he was just immortal and allergic to sunlight – now if they ever went that far again, she'd lose him. Again.

And on the weird and possibly extra-minus side, Angel had told her about telling her mother everything about Buffy being a Slayer, and what that meant… _after_ doing it while Buffy was busy. It was the only way that she could ever be made to accept Angel anywhere _in sight_ of her daughter, especially when Buffy remembered the vague non-explanations she'd made to her mom about how Angel was suddenly bad news. And knowing could only make Mom safer, both now and in the long run.

But she was _so_ not looking forward to the explosion, once Mom was done dealing with Xander.

Oh God, _Xander_… When it rained, it poured – and this one had really come back to bite her on the ass.

The ironic thing was, if she'd destroyed someone like that back at Hemery High – some random boy who had somehow managed to _truly_ earn her as an enemy – it would've been a thing of beauty. Something that would become legend, a byword for _exactly_ why you didn't cross Queen Bitch Summers. New students would have learned in whispers why what Buffy said, went – and this incident would have been pointed at, very quietly, with the words '_or else_' ominously attached to it. That Cordelia had mostly taken tacit credit for it, mainly because she was the Queen here in Sunnydale High and hadn't said otherwise, was the only silver lining in one horribly dark cloud.

So the entire school didn't know that she'd just destroyed (and indirectly orphaned, let's not forget _that_) one of her best friends as a bitchy joke. The only people who knew it were the ones that _mattered_ to her.

Oh, except her mom, who was _surely_ going to find out if she hadn't already from talking to Xander.

And Xander, who it turned out had been both shockingly stronger and heartbreakingly weaker than she'd ever even guessed. Xander, who hadn't recognised the joke for what it was. Xander, who if Willow was right about what she'd forgotten a long time ago, had been forcing himself to smile for years – who misunderstood a straightforward dose of turnabout, and turned it into his last straw. Xander, who had done something absolutely amazing and impossibly brave and suicidally _stupid_ to get her and Willow to forgive him, for something they'd already forgiven him for. Xander, who was probably _hating_ her right now. And she deserved every bit of it.

Those words haunted her now. Those four words. Or maybe three, with the way he'd slurred them.

"_Why are you crying?"_

As if someone crying over him was utterly impossible. Like he was someone who wasn't worth crying over, even as he laid there injured worse than she'd ever seen him.

Willow kinda hated her right now, too. The only reason why it wasn't worse was because Oz had pointed out, paradoxically, that it was more Buffy's fault than Willow's – which had hurt coming from the usually laconic werewolf, but had at least given Willow hope. Because Oz was right; Willow had followed Buffy's lead, and because of that Xander was more likely to forgive Willow. And (and this was where the paradox came in), Willow _had_ gone along with it too.

Buffy didn't hold it against Willow. She was blaming Buffy because it was that or lose all hope that Xander would forgive _her_ – and she thought Willow might actually go catatonic if that didn't happen. (Oh, and the part where she was frozen up when Willow came into the factory, and happened to be standing next to Angel…yeah, that could _not_ have looked good…) Come to think of it, when Xander forgave her (because he would, because he was Xander and Xander had loved Willow all his life, if not in the way that she had wanted), Willow was just as likely to go to pieces – because then she'd feel free to blame herself.

Yup. Oz was in for fun times. Not.

Giles was… She'd kinda lucked out there, actually. Not that Giles hadn't been extremely disappointed in her when he learned what her misjudgement had cost Xander. But, well… He had Ms. Calender back. And Spike and Drusilla were dead. And Angel was back, which mean Angelus wasn't lurking around planning to kill them all. Fact was, pretty much everything was fine in Gilesville, except for his Slayer doing stupid teenage things and feeling miserable about it.

And Angel… Angel was Angel.

Watching his face crumple as the memories came back to him: another moment for her nightmares.

Where they were with each other was…complicated. Very, very complicated. Head-splittingly complicated. It might actually be a toss-up who was feeling worse— no, no it wasn't, _he_ was feeling worse, no doubt whatsoever. He'd had a single perfect moment of happiness with her, and then he'd woken up and found that his inner demon had gone and ripped her heart out (as it were), terrorised her friends, killed a bunch of people and tried to end the world while he'd stepped out into the afterlife. Oh, and that feeling of happiness? Never again – or it'd all go horribly wrong, all over again.

Giles had felt it necessary to explain it to her when she complained in passing to him. "It's a _curse_," he'd said, "and what you're describing is exactly the way in which it _is_ a curse." Ms. Calender had been there, pointedly looking away – she probably had a pretty good guess about what might have happened if _she'd_ been the one to say that. (A clue: high chance of violence in the region, with a possibility of maiming; ear protection is advised.)

Right now, both of them were dancing in their weird little holding pattern, and trying their hardest not to think about _that_ stormcloud on the horizon. Though in Angel's case, it seemed part of his coping mechanism was to give Buffy new and terrifying things to worry about instead.

Her mom knew, or was going to find out. About everything.

…_Seriously_ not looking forward to the explosion.

—ox-oxo-xo—

Joyce stopped. "Though… can you forgive _her_, Xander? I do hope you can…but, I guess I can understand if you can't."

Xander's eyes unfocused, lost in thought and memory. He said nothing for a long time.

"Thought I was dreamin' that bit. Th' bit where they foun' me." Xander frowned. His next words were a monotone whisper. "She really was crying, wasn't she? Both o' them…"

After nearly two minutes gone in reverie, Xander nodded sharply, or as sharply as his injuries and the pharmaceutical regimen let him anyway. "Nah, it's okay. They've been left hangin' long enough already." And then, wonder of wonders, he began to chuckle, "Besides… I wouldn't want to've _saved Angel_ for nothing." He paused, blinking muzzily. "Man, I'm never gonna live that down, am I?"

Joyce couldn't help it – she burst out laughing.

"Oh, that reminds me Xander…" Joyce panted after she'd recovered from her cathartic fit of the giggles, "Angel told me to pass on a message. He said – the last thing he remembers of Angelus, is him being scared witless of you. He thought you might appreciate hearing that."

"Good to know," Xander replied, albeit without much feeling behind it.

"Anyway!" She clapped her hands, spirits high and full of purpose. "It's a school morning, which is why the others aren't here – in case you were wondering." He nodded reflexively. "You'll be in here until tonight at the least for observation – unless you'd prefer to leave tomorrow?"

"Nah," Xander said. "Already been attacked here. Best not tempt fate."

"True," Joyce conceded. Then she paused. "That doesn't happen…_often_ here, does it?"

Xander shrugged. She _thought_ it seemed like a 'not really' shrug. But Joyce still wasn't particularly happy with that response, as far as resounding guarantees of safety went.

—ox-oxo-xo—

As it turned out, it was a baseless worry. The demonic grapevine tended to pay attention when the Slayer came up – especially after the week-long rampage she'd just come off. And that was just over Xander going A.W.O.L.!

Besides, Angel was back on the White Hats' side, and broadcasting to all and sundry just what a Very Bad Idea it was to cross Xander Harris… with himself as the walking proof. And his ex-minions were wandering around after the relocation, and commiserating over that damn nutcase who'd walked in, captured Angelus and killed half of them while he was at it. (Because hey! Free drinks were free drinks…)

And also, Mayor Wilkins had quietly made it known in certain circles that such brazen attacks in _his_ hospitals were certainly not the kind of thing he'd be putting up with, no sirree! There were perfectly good motel strips for that. Did he have to make a point by bringing in the poaching troublemakers for a talk out in the woodshed? No, of course he didn't.

(That, and Wilkins had decided to keep a weather eye on young Harris – Drusilla, William and Angelus had been attention-seeking _menaces_, and Sunnydale was better without them. It was a pity about Angel still hovering around like a bad smell, but you couldn't have everything. Oh well – maybe he'd offer the young man an intern-ship or something at some point. Or just eat him come Sunnydale High Graduation '99. He'd need to think about that one for a bit.)

In any case, the warning, and indeed the pattern, was clear: hunt in the hospitals at your peril. If Harris didn't get you, the Slayer would. Or Angelus. Or the Mayor (or rather, the shadowy figure whose town it apparently really was). And was it really worth finding out the hard way who'd get the honours?

Unaware of any such reason why she should trust in the hospital's security, Joyce moved on briskly to consulting with the doctors – who again, seemed jarringly relaxed about this kind of thing. Harris's insurance was paid up to the end of the month, but they could see why he wanted out – after all, he'd spent enough time here recently. As long as he had somewhere to go, they had no problem letting him go there once they were sure he wouldn't relapse. And given his living circumstances, Joyce was also reminded that arranging the necessary guardianship papers would be a relatively simple matter – after all, it would only need to be for a few months, until Xander reached his majority; better than spending that time soaking up public funds in the psych ward, or negotiating the muddy waters of interstate custody battles and foster care arrangements. Prescriptions were discussed for various medications, a visit to a psychiatrist advised, care instructions given, etcetera, so on so forth, and dear _God_ how she was beginning to hate this hospital.

As she said goodbye to Xander and made ready to leave, almost on her way out, Joyce asked, "Is there anything you'd like me to tell the others?"

She waited politely for him to form an answer.

"Tell them…" he responded at length, "…tell them, I'm having trouble putting my Face on. I think Will'll get it. Tell 'em sorry." Xander sighed, with a trace of vulnerability lingering behind the flash of regret before both faded to blank. "I'll see you tonight."

—ox-oxo-xo—

Daniel 'Oz' Ozbourne sat on the top step of the Library's staircase to the mezzanine level, wishing for a bass guitar in his hands he could tune. Or a Willow he could tune, although Willow would only let him tune her so far.

He stopped, and briefly analysed that thought. It had sounded a lot dirtier than he'd meant it, when he thought of it that way. Amusing, but dirty. More amusing later down the track, when she decided to let him tune her a little further.

Right now, he could only hold her, and let his fingers run through her hair. It worked well on humans, as it did for canines. It might even work on lupines, though there was the constant issue of getting one's fingers bitten off if one tried it.

Willow sat two steps below his, close enough to press her shoulders back against him seeking reassurance, but not close enough to permit the pressing of certain Oz-parts into her back. That was okay, it was early days yet. Besides, there was nothing sexual about this – Willow was two steps from a panic attack, breath caught in her throat as she tried not to stare at Giles.

After a largely one-sided conversation into the library's phone extension that had been going on for a few minutes since they'd come at Buffy's near-frantic behest (mostly silent on Giles' end, which had upped the tension), Giles put the phone back in his cradle and withdrew his glasses for a good long polish.

"That was Mrs. Summers." He sighed, long and mournfully. "It seems… it seems that while Buffy was out on patrol yesterday evening, Angel visited her and told her, a-about Sunnydale's demonic side."

Willow gasped, and seemed to be on the verge of a long babble before Oz's finger traced the shell of her ear and she shivered. Buffy, who had been leaning against the main table, looked nervous but not surprised as she asked, "How did she take it?"

"Somewhat more…calmly than I had expected," Giles admitted. "Although, I gather I can expect to be lambasted at great length at some near point in the future. She told me this in no uncertain terms. That said – Buffy, you knew of this?"

"Not until afterwards," Buffy groused. "He popped by to warn me after I came back home. I almost decked him…"

"Hrm. Well, she's going to be disappointed to hear that. She had, after all, specifically told him _not_ to tell you." At Buffy's shocked look, he clarified, "Your mother felt that your past few days have been filled with enough stress – she believed telling you would only lead you to fret more than you needed to."

Buffy deflated. "Well, she was right… So, what's the damage?"

She was bracing herself, he could tell.

"Well, Angel might have unnecessarily worried you, but it appears that his idea to send her to Xander for more detail was a-a rather good decision. Now firstly: I think we can all agree this is excellent news…"

Now Willow was practically vibrating.

"Drusilla and Spike are indeed perished. It seems Xander staked Drusilla while she was busy feeding from him, while Spike foolishly left himself in an indefensible position at a critical moment. They were stakings of opportunity, but stakings nevertheless. After the Council hears of this, I do believe they might consider offering Xander some sort of trainee position…"

"Yeah, yeah, we know that!" Buffy exploded. "Get on with it!"

Giles narrowed his eyes. "A Council apprenticeship is, is nothing to sneer at, Buffy. Least of all for Xander; something like this might well see him attending college courtesy of the Council's purse." He sighed, replacing his glasses. "But yes, onto Xander – and this is indeed why I have asked you here, Buffy, Willow."

Oz was unfazed by his non-inclusion. Xander was Willow's best friend. For Oz, he was someone slightly above the level of an acquaintance, one who he needed to deal with fairly often but not someone he was in the habit of spending time with outside of Willow. Oz was here to keep Willow somewhat calm. Pure and simple.

"As I intimated earlier, Xander has indeed awoken and, will be fine, i-in the physical sense at least; he will be leaving the hospital this evening once the doctors are done with their tests. However… it seems that a fairly major complication has arisen regarding the issue of his housing."

Oz frowned. Even as Buffy paled and Willow seemed about to faint, he considered what Giles had said about Xander leaving the hospital. So he had somewhere to go, right?

"With his parents deceased…" Giles shifted uncomfortably, "and, having being labelled by the hospital as – I truly hate to say this, but – as a…suicide risk…"

Willow whimpered. Oz hugged her to him, rubbing his cheek against her temple, whispering, "Breathe," in her ear as he withdrew a little. Buffy blanched and hugged herself.

"And as well, being still a minor… he needed to have someone watching over him until he reaches his majority before they would release him."

"Where was he staying, anyway?" Oz decided to ask. Harmless, a good distraction for his Willow. Right?

Giles expelled a noisy, frustrated breath. "At home. At his parents' home, to be precise. Cleaning up the house in anticipation of its foreclosure."

"…Heavy." And people wondered why he said so little. Could he be blamed for not liking the taste of his own foot?

"In any case… Mrs. Summers has been apprised of his situation, and has given some thought to the matter. It must be said: Xander must have greatly impressed her with his actions. _Greatly_ so." Giles shook his head wonderingly, levelling a significant look at Buffy. "She told me he has given her something that Angel had not: _hope_. Hope that with the help of Xander, as well as others such as Willow, myself a-and whoever else might join us… you could ultimately win against the darkness, and live a long and happy life despite the pressures of your calling."

Buffy reeled, covering her mouth with her hand as her eyes brightened and shimmered.

This was huge. And good, very good. And something hard to think of Xander doing, or at least it had been before they'd found him at the factory. It was hard to take seriously, if you hadn't seen it first-hand: one guy, one human guy, walking into a vampire's lair and capturing the lead vamp. No powers, no magic, just a good plan and the _cojones_ to go ahead and go with it whatever the personal cost – and in doing so, he had proven hands-down that a normal human _could_ match it with the demonic night-life and come out on top.

It was just like Willow and Xander had been saying all this time: there was no _need_ for Buffy to fight alone. Just because she was the only one who _had_ to fight, didn't mean she was the only one that _could_. And who knew? Just maybe, Mrs. Summers was right too. All the Slayers before her had fought alone. Already Buffy had died once while following their example, only for her allies to revive her (something which had needed to be explained to him after hearing about Kendra). What might change, if they all worked together?

And if Mrs. Summers held that kind of hope…

"Mrs. Summers has decided to help, insofar as she is able… which, at present, she can so do in two ways. The first is to support her daughter in her calling – though, Buffy: just as I can expect to be yelled at, so _you_ can expect to be cried on." He beamed at her, happy in his charge's happiness despite his oft-stated reservations about this sort of thing. "Just a word of warning."

Buffy chuckled wetly, still crying herself.

"The second part, is where Xander comes in."

Willow, who had been smiling at Buffy and forgetting that she was still mad at her right now, snapped back around to zero in on Giles. Buffy gathered herself and paid attention.

"Rory Harris, it transpires, has a lengthy criminal record. As such, there had been a significant likelihood of Xander's being sequestered in the longer term within a psychiatric facility, o-or more likely again sent to live with other relatives until he arrived at his majority and was legally able to depart."

'_…Huh. That makes sense,_' he thought as Willow went rigid.

"However… after her talk with first Angel and then Xander, Mrs. Summers has decided that Xander's presence in Sunnydale – specifically, the help he renders Buffy in the fight against the darkness – is simply too valuable to do without. As such, she has decided to offer Xander guardianship until he graduates high school – an offer he has accepted."

This statement was met with befuddlement. A loooong period of befuddlement.

Buffy cleared her throat. "S-So, Xander's… moving in? With _me_?"

"Yes," Giles responded. "It goes without saying just how much regard she bears Xander, to extend such an invitation. Your mother went on to explain that I was ineligible as a British citizen, while neither of Willow's parents are in residence often enough to keep constant watch of Xander, which was an essential requirement for anyone he might have stayed with. I remind you: Xander has been labelled as a suicide risk – as such, he legally _needs_ that supervision."

Giles sighed, playing with his glasses again. "If this is indeed the case… as she believes it may well be, she thinks it wise to keep Xander here in Sunnydale, where he has friends and where he may continue to help in our fight." He frowned. "A-albeit in a non-combatant capacity, at least until we can be certain that he will not… well…"

The first thought that Oz had, was one that he was unashamed of: '_Glad he's not staying with Willow._' That would've been awkward. What could he say? The wolf was territorial. Or at least that was the excuse he'd stick to, if Willow ever brought it up.

The second thought that Oz had, was only slightly less reflexive but just as selfish: '_Glad _I'm_ not staying with Buffy._' Not that he would say a word on the matter, but the melodrama surrounding Buffy and Angel, which was something that had Willow swooning with the star-crossed romance of it all, just left him cold. Though not as cold as Angel. Putting up with that, on a constant basis, would be unpleasant.

The third thought that Oz had, was more considered: '_Is Mrs. Summers playing matchmaker?_' It was worth considering… but not seriously, and not now, and _never_ out loud. There were too many barriers in the way, Angel being a lot but far from all of them. Not to mention Mrs. Summers herself – while she might prefer Xander to Angel as a romantic interest for Buffy, that meant…almost nothing, given what her opinion of Angel had to be.

Buffy might well have thought something on the same riff, because she winced. Then her eyes snapped wide open and she began to say something, which Giles interrupted.

"…And if you're about to ask what I think you're about to ask? Yes, he forgives you, he forgives both of you. In fact," he continued, "your mother asked me to point out that just as you left him running ragged and landing himself in the hospital – so _he_ unknowingly left _you_ running ragged and landing _your_self in the hospital. He apologised for that, by the way."

Buffy stopped, disbelief twisting her features – and then dropped her face in her hands. "Of _course_ he did. Big goof…"

"In any case, she and I know full well you're not truly going to believe it until he tells you himself. So, once he's released you will be able to find him at the Summers' residence. Although… Willow?"

Willow, who had deflated like a very relieved balloon, tensed again. "Yes?"

"Mrs. Summers said that you might know what this means: apparently Xander is having trouble putting his face on. Do you have any clue as to what he meant?"

"Um… that just sounds like he's not gonna pretend to be happy. Not that he should though, because—"

"Breathe," Oz told her after dropping two fingers over her mouth. "We get it. Just breathe."

Willow breathed and tried not to hyperventilate, while Oz tuned his Willow to soothe her and thought about faces, beginning to have an inkling of what Xander had meant.

—ox-oxo-xo—

This was actually kinda inspiring. All of them, all together, all secrets aside, for what Jenny was almost certain was for the first time ever. Or at least, it was if you didn't include Cordelia, who wasn't about to unbend that far. Or Amy, who Jenny was beginning to think she needed a good talk with once she found the time. Or Kendra, who was… somewhere far from here, probably training or Slaying something. But still. Buffy, Willow, Oz; Rupert and herself, and even Angel had visited once the sun had set, waiting for Joyce to return with Xander.

It was a pity about all the crying, though, once the last pair coming arrived. First Willow cried on him. Then Buffy cried on him a little, while Willow kept crying. Then, after Willow and Buffy had let go of him – Willow having to be prised off him on pain of spatula, eventually crying some more on Oz – Angel had stepped forward. Without crying, but looking extremely out of place.

"Thank you."

Xander had just nodded. And it was then that Jenny knew, that there was something undeniably changed about Xander Harris.

"But, next time? If I ever go bad again? Just kill me."

A solemn dip of the head, and a serious, "He'll never see me coming," was Xander's response. At which point Buffy went back to crying, this time on Angel. It had not escaped anyone's notice, at least at that moment before the mad repressing started, that both of them had meant every last word.

Either Angelus would die – or more likely, Xander would die first.

Angel left soon after, not comfortable with all the waterworks and definitely not comfortable under Joyce Summers' hard eye. He'd only stayed that long because of all the aforementioned crying, waiting after the first bout to say what he had to. In fact he'd only come in the first place to pass a message on to Joyce that he'd need to talk with Xander at some later point. Buffy had practically nailed his feet to the floor to get him to stay until her mother came home with Xander, milking the apparent truce to its utmost.

More crying followed, this time by Buffy and Joyce, on each other. Apparently this one had been coming for a while. Of course that set off Willow again, and even Rupe let a few slip. That was fair enough, she guessed – apparently Buffy had tried telling her mother once, and it had gone _very_ badly. She'd needed her mother for a long time, and was only now getting her where it counted. And on the other hand, Joyce had just been forced to accept that her daughter was stuck in a nightmarish fight that would likely end up killing her before she'd even get to finish college.

There was a brief, awkward period of regathering. Then at the mother's careful prompting, some stories started coming out. First the ones about Buffy, some of the ones Joyce hadn't learned about or only heard of in passing. Angel and Xander, after all, had been her only sources – and Xander probably hadn't told her anything beyond what he'd needed for his story to make sense. There were yet more tears, these ones of the sorta-happy kind, just released into an already emotional atmosphere. By common accord, the stories told were some of the more light-hearted ones (Buffy mistaking cars for demons on Halloween, for instance) – as Joyce stressed, the truce between herself and Rupert was just that, a _truce_. One which it wasn't a smart idea to test too far.

Besides – the downer was coming. It was inevitable. Because soon enough, Xander's story needed to be addressed. Very carefully.

First, though, Willow's panic attack had to be dealt with. As it turned out, she'd been blaming Buffy in a convoluted hope that Xander would forgive her. But once he had, and she'd been given the time to believe it and process it, she'd forgiven Buffy too. Forgiving herself, though, turned out to be much harder. So Xander got cried on, _again_. He eventually dealt with this by getting up and sitting next to Oz, plopping Willow down right on the werewolf's lap. And so Oz was cried on again. And then Xander again. Then Oz again. Oh, and Willow too, because Buffy went over to offer her own comfort, and ended up getting emotional over it. That set her mother off again, and for nearly three minutes thereafter the couch groaned under the weight of five people, three of them crying women, as another man looked on and cried as well. Honestly, this was just getting _embarrassing_ now…

Only three sets of dry eyes were in the house, and even her own eyes would water a little on occasion, if only by the law of contagion. Oz was dry-eyed, but definitely concerned (and more than a little discomforted at all the closeness and the crying…and, quite likely, the sheer weight).

Xander, though… Jenny had been watching him carefully, more so since that moment of dissonance during his exchange with Angel. And there _was_ emotion there, if you watched for it. It would come in glints, flashes – mirth, worry, relief, shame, more than one moment of desolation… But each would fade away almost as it appeared.

It was like he was repressing his emotions, and yet there seemed something… _off_ about that idea. There didn't seemed to be any effort involved in the fading of those expressions, conscious or not.

There was an unmistakeable flash of relief and relaxation, though, once Willow had switched off to crying on Oz again and he could escape the weepy huddle. So at least there was _something_ normal there.

Eventually the others broke off, once they realised Xander had moved to an armchair and was staring off into the dining room.

"Oh, right!" Joyce exclaimed. "We brought back Chinese – it _should_ still be warm…"

—ox-oxo-xo—

In the end, it was mostly Joyce who covered the more upsetting parts over dinner. It gave people the chance to contain themselves by staring down at their food and avoiding eye contact and letting their seats trap them.

That didn't mean there wasn't more tears. It was just quieter, and less embarrassing. After all, certain parts of the tale were moderately terrible. School janitors couldn't be relied on to make house visits and clean up after one's messily dead parents. More's the pity – sad, how not all the messes the demons made were in school or in public.

The protective mother _did_, however, allow Xander to be coaxed into debriefing the others on the assault on Angelus's lair as he carefully used a fork in his more lightly bandaged left hand to eat.

And Jenny was not the only one to be very impressed by the ingenuity and forethought Xander had sunk into it. Paintgun pellets were a lot less painful to be hit with than swords, but that was important when many demonic enemies might rip your chosen weapons out of your hands and turn them on you. And filling them with holy water had been a stroke of genius – not particularly damaging, but that had never been the point. Enraged enemies didn't think straight. That could be taken advantage of.

Jenny had also approved of the 'contingencies'. Or at least one of them – grenades were messy and not entirely certain. But the sedative-filled needle? She would not have been surprised if it didn't have a good bit of air in it as well. She might have to start thinking about applying that idea herself. One quick jab, and turning could be less of a problem than it had been. As it was, both had been used well to maximum effect.

Xander (and to a lesser extent Joyce) also finally learned what the others had done afterwards.

The car had been moved to Willow's place, with her parents' current absence, after everything had been loaded into the back seat. First though, Angelus had been crammed into its trunk and driven to Giles' apartment, where the heavy-duty restraints had been broken out. Then Oz had driven back to his own home, and fetched the _extra_-heavy-duty restraints. After the price Xander had paid, no chances would be taken.

Meanwhile, Jenny had loaded Xander into her own car and raced for Sunnydale General.

The suicide watchlist, as far as the hospital had been concerned, was actually more of a codephrase for those who had been 'attacked' frequently enough to warrant the possibility of attempted suicide-by-'gang member' being behind the repeat visits. The practice was in fact something some of them might have been more familiar with, if not for the fact that it wasn't strictly within the hospital's rulebook – for those who weren't obviously, violently insane, and especially for minors with guardians, it was dispensed with on the silent understanding that either there was nothing to worry about, they would eventually succeed in their death-wish elsewhere, or their guardians would deal with it themselves. That Xander had fallen into this was merely an accident of his circumstances.

Perhaps it wasn't surprising that no-one immediately relaxed when Jenny relayed this. Xander might not be strictly suicidal, but he certainly wasn't acting like the Xander they knew. That didn't stop them from trying, though. Give them enough time, and few enough signs from Xander, and who knew?

In any case, Jenny and Willow had gone into overdrive on the Kalderash Soul Curse, even calling in Giles for linguistic advice. This turned out to be a good call, as between the three of them they had managed to trim a lot of the wasted energy out of the ritual, and thus make it a lot safer to cast. In terms of energy requirements, anyway – Jenny could still remember the sheer _malevolence_ of the spirit that had answered the ritual's call, its vindictive resolve as it doomed Angelus to his cursed state once more. Soon, very soon, Jenny would need to cleanse herself of the oily taint that still seemed to lurk under her skin when she dwelt on it.

Angelus had been tranquillised repeatedly, throughout that hectic, tension-filled night. It was in the early hours of the morning, two hours before the sun rose, that Angel had awoken at last.

Last night, as Buffy had reluctantly gone on patrol, her first since the flu had landed her in hospital – and, while Angel had popped in while she was gone to confess to Joyce – Jenny had taken the time to call the Clan matriarch. She was coming soon, to verify the curse. But the signs were hopeful. On both fronts – her own error of judgement, to all appearances, had been redeemed in a way that would not only earn her forgiveness among the family, but would send her star rising within the pagan community. Now she just needed to make sure the curse would hold, and see herself cleansed, and her own redemption (and her vengeance on Angelus, for killing yet more of her Family) would be total.

Now _that_ would be when she celebrated. And grieved properly at last.

Encouragingly, she could also see how Joyce's approving support of Xander's offensive – or at least, of what his success signified – had left Buffy brightening as she mulled it over. The more detail came out, the more it became apparent that Buffy herself could have done that. She could've done it far better, in fact, if not for Angelus being involved – close off the exits, lead in with the firebombs, pepper them with holy water pellets, and then just chew through them all once they were running around panicked and on fire.

Angelus made it more difficult, of course – Angelus would've just fled once Buffy's tactics had started to show, being far less prone to underestimation of Slayers than of Xanders. But still: attacking a lair with three dozen vampires in it? Not as impossible as it sounded. That was a serious confidence boost, one that she had transparently _needed_ after her dragged-out, scoreless draws and painfully close wins of the past few weeks. And it also gave her friends another option when it came to helping her out – they were going to be far safer with more appropriate weapons to their skill levels.

—ox-oxo-xo—

With most of those present still hovering on the edge of exhaustion after the events of the past couple days/weeks, and with the flow of emotions leaving several of the guests washed out and more tired than might have been otherwise, the gathering showed signs of winding up as the remains of dinner were cleaned away.

Before that happened, however, there was one answer that Jenny wanted. Or more accurately, one that Jenny suspected some of the others needed. None of the others had asked it, and most had their reasons for not inquiring – mainly to avoid stepping on hidden landmines and triggering either Xander (who for the entire night had been remote) or Joyce (who for the entire night had been in mother-bear mode…that, or crying), or Willow in Oz's case.

"What was that trouble you were having with your face, anyway?"

Xander blinked, cutting off a yawn, then gazed thoughtfully over at Willow. And then he started singing.

"_Grey skies are gonna clear up, put on a happy face… Brush off the clouds and cheer up, put on a happy face…_"

He finished the Tony Bennett classic's chorus and fell silent, waiting for their verdict.

"Very creepy," Oz eventually volunteered. Truly he had a gift for words.

Xander shrugged. "Willow did use'ta sing once…"

The moderately drugged teen spoke, in a halting, bland monotone that was occasionally muddied by the slurring, as he tried to find the words to explain his Face. It was a convoluted, scatterbout tale of a song taken seriously, nightmares about clowns, a game of make-pretend where it wasn't really a game for him, and a happy face (a Xander-Face, he called it) that he'd worn for so many years that everyone else forgot or just never learned there was a Xander under it. Listened to in passing, the Cliff Notes boiled down to Willow being right earlier – he was having trouble pretending to be happy for everybody's benefit, so he'd be acting a little off until he got better.

Later, Jenny found it ironic. Before all this, he could have said three-quarters of that, filled the rest of the gaps with various zingers and pop-culture references, and most of it might well have gone unremarked. (Hell, as Willow told her in the days after – a lot of it was material he _had_ said over previous years, and no-one had taken it seriously enough to do anything about it.)

Right then though, as he fell silent and began to doze off in his chair, she could only think that Xander Harris had just answered any and all doubts regarding his sanity.

He hadn't any. Not in the least. And it was debatable whether it had ever been there.

Then again, he was a teenage boy. What had she been expecting?

Rupert eventually stirred. "So in essence… in order to raise your spirits, and those of your friends – you inflicted some, _bizarre_ combination of mental disorders on yourself…"

"Meh," Xander mumbled. "Wasn't 'at disordered… _I_ knew where it all was…"

There was laughter and rolling of eyes, because it was what they did when Xander cracked a joke (even if he was being serious). It was habit, and hope, and normality, and repression at its finest. And if the little upturn of Xander's lips as he fell asleep meant anything, at least some part of 'the Xander-Face' must've been pure Xander – clearly his friends meant the world to _any_ Xander, and having them be happy one of his dearest goals.

"…_**And as the mortal boy repents and earns his absolution, his wisdom in my domains matures all the quicker… And so my own designs on the mortal are advanced. I must admit, your action did add an interesting aspect to his experience of divine punishment."**_

"…_**?"**_

"_**Oh yes – this mortal has the potential to be one of my favourites in this age! Already the ways of his love show his potential. And when his understanding of my domain truly blossoms… I can see how far he advanced, even stunted as he was in your realm. I am truly eager to witness this mortal's impact in my own… So yes, this state of affairs will stand. Do not take this as future invitation."**_

"…"

"…_**Even if that was not her intention. For **_**her****_, however… I shall see if she learns the wisdom that eluded her counterpart. And if she does not…"_**

But Rupert and Oz still looked thoughtful as Joyce began politely but firmly shooing people out, sensing a mystery to be chewed over. Willow's watery, fervent eyes as she started telling Oz what she remembered about 'playing Faces' with her childhood friends while climbing into his van still practically shouted her guilt; it would be interesting to see whether Xander's best friend would attempt to revive the class-clown friend she remembered or try to reacquaint herself with the friend she had forgotten.

Most significant, and most hopeful, however, were the expressions of Buffy and Joyce Summers as Jenny and Rupe made their farewells and stepped out of their home.

The diminutive Slayer had clearly only got the gist of Xander's rambling soliloquy, but she'd just as clearly come to one important conclusion: whoever she'd thought Xander Harris was, she'd obviously been way off the mark. The remorse was still visible, but fading fast under wariness – and calculation. The Romany witch could only hope Buffy would calculate favourably; after all, Angel's soul curse still by its very nature harboured the same weakness it had before. The fact that Angel seemed to have somehow become one of Xander's advocates might well sway her opinion in the right direction.

Joyce, though… concern was what Jenny saw. Naked concern, which hardened into determination as she sent her daughter to fetch some linens to spread out on the couch. (The Summers' newest resident would be moved into the basement in the next week or so once it was set up for that purpose – Joyce being understandably leery about having her daughter and the boy her age sleeping on the same floor – but for now the couch would do.) It was odd to think that of all of them, Buffy's _mother_ knew Xander best. But whatever she knew about him which she'd not spoken of to the others, Jenny could take comfort in the certainty that Joyce Summers was _not_ going to let matters slide this time.

As far as Jenny Calender was concerned, Xander's dilemma had been straightforward. All it took was learning the knack of picking up the floating pieces of data from Willow's endless sentences and Xander's wry self-deprecations. (Though an eye for fashion also helped; clothing in 'bright', 'shapeless' and 'cheap' only lent themselves to so many conclusions in the context of adolescent males. It was just a matter of thinking past 'colourblind slob', which was only _usually_ the answer.) Xander was poor, had a dysfunctional family, didn't see many prospects for his future other than to follow in their footsteps, and was justifiably unenthusiastic about that; his friends and, more recently, the good fight were mere distractions from that depressing fact of life.

What he needed was ambition and advice. And Joyce Summers plainly intended to pound those things into his head, even if it took the blunt end of a _fire axe_ to make it stick. For the boy who had both earned an important victory against the night-life and unwittingly helped her redeem herself in her Clan's eyes, Jenny could think of no better-fitting punishment for his good deeds.

* * *

><p><strong>Ending AN:** If you were wondering who was providing the extradimensional commentary for this one? Well, hopefully I laid enough hints. But if you missed them, I'll post the entity's identity in the next chapter.

Anyway, this mostly closes out the main event-sequence of the story. The next chapter will be a muchly-cleaned up version of Xander's 'Faces' speech in multiple 3rd-person POV, sort of a bonus chapter which will explain a lot of what the hell is up with Xander's mind, and why he went off the rails in such spectacular fashion; the sixth chapter will be an epilogue.

In the meantime, HAPPY NEW YEAR'S and Stuff! Hope this latest instalment was enjoyed and the angsty Scoobies empathised with and/or laughed at, and don't forget to leave some feedback. Next one should be up around weekend-time…


	5. From Beneath (idiots)

**Disclaimer:** Joss, M.E., not me. (Guys who wrote/performed 'Put On A Happy Face'? Not me either.)

**Warnings:** _moderate_ language, deep-seated insanity of the Xander.

**Number:** 5/6

**A/N:** As promised, the 'entities' list: Ch1 – D'Hoffryn (re. Anyanka & Halfrek); Ch2 – Jasmine (re. Cordelia & Angel); Ch3 – The Oracles (re. Angel, Buffy & Kendra); and Ch4 – Aphrodite (re. Xander), wellspring of the spell through which the extratemporal influence was brokered. For the last, there will be a brief GoOoD-style explanation for these passages in the final chapter.

Apologies for the brief delay between postings on this one - while the first half had already been written up, I felt that some current Xander-POV was needed for this last chapter of the main sequence.  
>While I'm here, more thanks to <strong>Starway Man<strong> (Giles & the Council?: ...yeah, this S2 Giles hasn't quite got around to pulling his head _entirely_ out of his arse about the Council just yet; custody?: not, not that easy - but there's a plan in place; Cordelia's future?: and plans there, too, if looser ones), and well as **wataru51** for their reviews.

* * *

><p><strong>Defaced, Derailed and Divergent<strong>

**Chapter 5: 'Put On A Happy Face…' (or, From Beneath)**

—**ox-oxo-xo—**

_Willow hadn't always been a sufferer of stagefright. It wasn't so bad, anyway, when everyone else was doing it. Back a little before Xander's sixth birthday, the homeroom teacher (who also taught music for the upper elementary years) had developed a habit of getting the class to sing along to various inoffensive songs to fill time. It had been mildly embarrassing fun for all. And Willow had liked one particular number, at least once the teacher had shown the class a video of the production in which it was featured._

_Willow was almost always right about things. Maybe, Xander thought, there was something more to that song…_

_As many horror writers in various mediums could attest, taking 'inoffensive' songs seriously had a great potential for disaster when approached too literally. And so, with Xander's 6th birthday party came a years-long clown phobia, which tended to revolve around the image of murderous, face-stealing clowns – putting on someone _else's_ happy face, as it were._

_Soon afterwards, Xander had a rough patch at home. And in the depths of his little boy's mind, Xander began to make connections._

_Willow and Jesse were sad when he was sad. Willow would get sadder and cry on him. Jesse though, Jesse would try to cheer him up. In the short term, both worked pretty well – especially when Xander learned to use Jesse's trick on Willow when she was upset because he was upset. But Xander still knew that it would be far better if Willow never cried, because Willows shouldn't cry. (Unless they were trees, he had to amend at one point. Willow knew stuff like that.)_

_But he'd already figured out that Willow and Jesse were happy when he was happy. And being happy was nice. It was something to try. So one day, in front of a mirror, he put on a big smile and cracked a joke. It looked like it might work._

_Another day, when Willow was down in the dumps because her parents had left her with a babysitter, he tried it for real. And it did work! Willow was happy when he was happy – even if he wasn't really happy and she only thought he was. Of course, Willow was smart, so she always worked it out after a while. But Xander talked fast, and convinced her that it was just a kind of pretend, a sort of game that only her and Jesse got to play with him. And Willow leaped all over that bandwagon. She liked those kind of games. She liked the sound of this game, too! It meant if she guessed how he was really feeling, and he told her, it made her a good friend._

_It made him kind of embarrassed when she put it like that. Boys didn't cry, which was stupid as far as Willow was concerned. But then, boys could be stupid – this being something she'd heard a lot, from practically everyone _but_ boys. So she generously made a concession – if he was pretending, and she knew he was pretending, and he knew that she knew he was pretending, that was good enough. She was still a good friend, even if she just pretended with him instead of badgering him into telling her what was wrong._

_Never let it be said that Xander couldn't be devious when he had to be. Because now she pretended she was happy that he was happy. And he pretended to be happy…but at the same time, he could do the cheering-up thing and make her really happy, so happy that she forgot they were still pretending. And sometimes, if she was happy enough for long enough, he'd find that _he_ wasn't pretending any more either – and even if the reasons he was unhappy in the first place couldn't be changed and couldn't be fixed no matter how much Willow wanted him to talk about it, being happy was still nice._

_See? Everyone wins._

_Xander, Jesse and Willow soon had themselves a great deal of fun, when Faces were played with. It was like pulling faces, only Faces were more…just, _more_. They could tell each other outrageous lies, and try to put on Faces which made the fibs even funnier. They could make up or put together Faces, and use them in their games – Doctors and Nurses was a lot more absorbing when played through Faces. Xander and Jesse got very good at using the right Face to look innocent and get out of trouble. And Willow got very, very good at picking out Xander and Jesse's Faces…though eventually enough minor disasters occurred that she started having trouble throwing them on herself at a moment's notice._

_It evolved, and its meaning changed, as the trio hit their teens._

—ox-oxo-xo—

_For Jesse, it was a fun game, and a good trick. But that's all it ever really was. Xander and Willow were having fun and being happy, and that's all Jesse needed to know. Unless he _needed_ to know, in which case he'd just ask. And the games you played were always going to change as you grew up._

_For Willow, especially once her parents found out about the Faces and took it for an interest in psychology, she learned how Faces were really expressions of emotional control and conviction which were principally useful as motivational tools and were best applied to achieving goals. And Willow had always enjoyed learning new things, so she joyfully jumped headfirst into seas of jargon and academia…until she got to junior-high school, and started learning more things, and got even better grades. And as she grew older, Faces transmuted into what other people might have called obsessions. Willow chose to think of it as an important part of the art of dedicating herself to her goals and interests. A childhood game evolved and was subsumed into a learning tool – like counting games to finance or nursery rhymes to singing in a band (not that she'd ever do _that_!), the best games you played as children weren't just fun, they were adapted and got added to and became more serious and educational and indispensable as you grew up._

_For Xander, though, Faces had never really been a game. Making it a game just made Faces more fun, and work better, and net friendly feedback on how well they worked. Xander watched as first Jesse and then Willow grew up and forgot about Faces. And he was kinda sad about that. But it was all right, because Faces worked best of all when you pretended they weren't Faces, and that was easier when people didn't pick at them. Besides, the few years that he'd spent using Faces in their games had also taught Xander how to summon up bits of himself and slot them into new or existing Faces so they could do different things._

_His first Face, the one that had started as a grin and a joke at age six, had grown and swollen and had a whole range of attitudes and responses lined up behind it for when they could come in handy. It became an all-purpose Face, the one that he wore to try to be a happy Xander – because a happy Xander helped Willow and Jesse be happy, and a happy Willow and Jesse helped Xander be happy. And increasingly, it _did_ work. So he kept that Face on, for so long that people started looking at him funny when he took it off. It became his Xander-Face. And it was a great Face – it let him do almost anything._

_Almost._

_There were some flaws in it, mostly ones of miscommunication. Most of what Xander-Face said was cheeky or sardonic, peppered with quips and SoCal-isms, the better to keep his friends laughing and happy. Which was great most of the time, and did give him a private sense of amusement as people tried to winnow through his words to find the meanings in them. But while he _could_ be serious, he wasn't often _taken_ seriously when he used the Xander-Face to do it with…probably something to do with the smartass remarks that came out anyway. Not to mention, it didn't do so great at talking to hot girls. So he learned to compensate, adding more switchboards for where extra elements could be imported from other Faces, or (re)learning how to switch to those other go-to Faces within a heartbeat… or, easiest of all, just refusing to take Xander-Face off and letting it weather the storm._

_Simply, apart from Willow and Jesse, most things just weren't that important. So, all too often, he just didn't take things seriously. Xander-Face wasn't initially built for deflecting criticism, but it worked well for that too. Just another thing not to take seriously. And besides, Faces weren't meant to break. Break-y Faces were defective Faces that needed to be sent back to the drawing board._

_Games changed as the players grew into adolescence and adulthood. _People_ changed as they grew into adolescence and adulthood. Behaviours that were fine for children became childish. Things that children took for granted became things to be questioned. And not least, cooties became not such a significant issue. In short, children matured and, now with some experience and education under their belts, began the process of growing up and working out what the results would look like when they were done._

_Xander-Face looked, and saw a Face that never came off, because it never _needed_ to come off. A Twinkie of the Face-world, a Face that could weather an emotional holocaust and still make people smile and be happy. A Face that could make _him_ happy sometimes._

_Xander wondered what would be left under the Face by then. And he tried not to look._

—ox-oxo-xo—

_Then the (barely, mostly self-)hidden reality of Sunnydale came home to roost, and Jesse's life was paid as the price for knowledge._

_It was a few days afterwards, when Xander first began to gain an inkling what the answer to that question might be._

_Xander-Face was versatile, but another flaw had been discovered. It was excellent for comforting and cheering people up – but not so much for grieving. So he stood in front of his bedroom mirror, and tried to think of a Face that could grieve._

_Grieving wasn't something that he'd ever actually attempted; while a few distant relatives and acquaintances from school had died at points in his life, the emotional payload had seemed to be mostly made up of curiosity and the need to understand _why_, with some caution and/or the urge to cheer someone else up maybe tossed in on top of it. Brooding was easy, he did that when he listened to country'n'western alone in his room. But brooding was… honestly, it struck him as kinda hollow. Like moping, or sulking. Brooding to Xander was largely something to put in a Face, to make a point – or occasionally, make into its own Face to put on for a short while, to relieve stress on the Xander-Face._

_Jesse was one of the most important people in Xander's life. Jesse didn't deserve to be brooded over. If Jesse were here right now, he'd be telling him to go cheer Willow up._

_(That or telling him, "Ow! Watch it with the pointy bit of wood, dude!")_

_Wise words, those. Xander decided he should just go do that. But Willow would probably expect him to be grieving too, so he should give it a go before he left._

…_Hmm. It probably needed a new Face to go with it first._

_He deliberately dropped all the Faces, for the first time in…three years? and saw what was underneath it. Held what he saw in place as he studied it for a few seconds, and let Xander-Face slide back into place so he could experiment for a little bit._

_Serious-Face turned out to be better at conveying grief. He'd use that one for the memorial…if there was a memorial, Jesse's parents weren't exactly up with the thought of Jesse never coming back. The work of a few minutes succeeded at adding hints of grief to Xander-Face. It looked about right, like he was trying to hide the grief and mostly succeeding. That would do for Willow, who would be distracted in her own grief so he'd probably get away with it – by now she'd mostly forgotten about Faces, remembering those times only as fun games and the odd Face used as an in-joke. (Except the Resolve Face, which she learned by watching her nanna. That one only got used when she really, _really_ meant it, which was why he took care to cave when faced with it.)_

_Grief resisted fitting onto a new Face. Boys didn't cry. Men cried even less. And Willow needed to be made happy, so he went and did his best with what he had._

—ox-oxo-xo—

_Working with Buffy Summers came with the opportunity to experience a great many unusual emotions, and work out how they fitted into his Faces. Well, 'opportunity' didn't exactly fit a lot of the time. And 'experience' was a weasel-word that hid apocalyptic pants-crapping badness. But his Faces found some benefit. It was nice, knowing that not even bowel-loosening fear could stop the quips from flowing._

_It wasn't so nice, knowing that he could never use Hyena-'Face', not even a little. It would've been a good way to build a Confident-Face, if only it didn't give Willow fits and make Buffy want to hit him with a desk again._

_The Hyena Alpha, Soldier-Guy… they weren't _exactly_ Faces, but they were something close – complex, somewhat alien bundles of personality that had their own reactions and responses and logics. Making his own Faces to emulate them came particularly easy to him, but he had to be careful with them – they were more complete than most of his invented Faces, and tended to start warping his core into mental and emotional patterns that resembled their progenitors if he wore them for too long. (Maybe that was why the Soldier memories had lingered longer in him than they had in the others… though maybe not. Repression was the cool thing, after all – not so much of a good cross-section when it was made up of exactly three people comparing notes.)_

_The Faces theme did take some major blows, though._

_The first was after Billy, the abused kid whose psychic powers gave all of Sunnydale nightmares – or rather, brought many of them to life. Great as it had felt punching that damn Clown, a worm of unease had begun to gnaw in his gut afterwards as similarities between the Clown and his Faces were internally noted. But then Serious-Face made an important contribution, being directly responsible for getting Angel off his ass and thus ending up with Buffy being brought back to life, the Master Slayed and the day saved. So the doubt was buried, at least until later._

_The second was after another Billy – Billy Fordham. Buffy's depiction of the leave he'd apparently taken of his senses reminded Xander of nothing so much as another Face. A Face which had persisted even after its creator had drowned in desperation and despair and drugs. Was that what it was like to be a vampire? Just another Face, minus the soul that made it grow and change?_

_Would Buffy even notice, if something like that ever happened to him? If he ever gave up? Willow might remember, but Buffy had not really ever met Xander – all she knew was Xander-Face._

_And so Xander began to realise that he'd mousetrapped himself in his best-known Face. Willow needed that Face, needed to know that Xander was the boy she remembered. Buffy needed that Face too, needed to know that Xander was there to lift her spirits when she was down and poke holes in her melodrama with jabs of silliness and sardonic servings of common-sense._

_But then, Cordelia only knew that Face too. (Or maybe not – he might have never told her about the Faces, but she'd known him long enough that she _might_ remember what he'd been like before them…) Either way, she found Xander-Face good enough to drag into closets and ravage with her lips._

_So Xander made the best of it, pouring himself into the Xander-Face and beginning to distance his everyday thoughts from the other Faces. The more things he experienced, the more life he lived, the more Xander-Face could evolve and grow as Xander did. Even now, Xander-Face could portray almost anything, and it would just take some work to fold the other Faces into it. And as both grew, he would become his Face and his Face would become him. It helped him make Willow and Buffy, and increasingly Cordelia, happy – and they made him happy in turn. For better or worse, it was the best thing to do. The only thing left to do._

—ox-oxo-xo—

_If Cordelia had taken him back, if Amy's vengefully-timed apology hadn't clued her into the purpose behind the disastrous love spell… it might have saved Xander-Face._

_If Willow and Buffy had been more careful about their reaction, instead of subconsciously electing to follow the High School Queen's (subtly Hellmouth-enhanced) lead… _that_ might have saved Xander-Face._

_A few months down the track, along a path of slightly different turns… A decision made to keep the world safe – to break Willow's trust, to break Buffy's heart – a decision made largely for himself and his happiness… after making that kind of decision, even being made fray-adjacent after losing Cordelia might not have broken Xander-Face._

_In so many permutations of their derivative reality, Xander-Face might have become Xander who became Xander-Face and stuck with it. He might have grown up to be a clownish, smartmouthed man with a knack for lifting spirits and managing superpowered teenage girls and construction, with a weakness for puppy-dog eyes and a comically horrible run of luck at romance, with a hidden well of discontent that he gradually worked through as he lived on into his twenties and thirties, assuming he lived that long – just a man, like many other men, living their lives and embracing their Faces (worker, father, sports-team supporter, etc.). A man with a comparatively strange life and issues therein, but a man nonetheless. A man of Face._

_Right then, though, Xander was seventeen, and trying to deal with hormones and high school melodramas and monsters. And combinations thereof, many complicated and stressful combinations thereof. He was in a more precarious position than he had realised, trying long-term plans and adjustments with his Face._

_For over a decade, Xander had used his emotions like blunt-force weapons. His impulses and urges, pumped through body-language amplifiers to best effect. His heart on his sleeve, as bright and blinding as his shirts. All to fool others – all in turn to fool himself. All by shouting down every other internal voice, all those parts of him which never made it into a Face, until he was deaf to them._

_They rarely actually shut up, though._

_A girl who was his best friend, and knew him like nobody else left on the planet. Another girl who probably counted as a friend. One more girl who, for a short time, had been his girlfriend. And a man who had once made his own stupid mistakes, and now wore his own Face with pride and dry humour – a man who gave him something to aim for, in his own way. All united in a purpose, maybe the highest and best Purpose there was: To Save The World. That had been his foundation. They had been his chosen audience, the heart of his message._

_Faces needed an audience. Take away the audience, and what need was there to shout?_

_Faces needed a message. Take away the message, and you were just pulling faces._

_Xander was not his Face. He was none of his Faces. But he had spent eleven years investing his emotions, lodging pieces of himself into those Faces, discarding and repressing and ignoring everything that didn't fit into them._

_In so many permutations of their derivative reality, Xander had eventually needed to let those issues be heard. It would have been long and painful, embarrassing and shameful in parts, but Xander(-Face) had processed them and grown for it._

_There and then, though, those voices were still quiet. Not _silent_, never silent. But when Xander gave up juggling between his Faces, _looked_ into the mirror at last, and _saw_ the not-face for what it was, it was to find all those disparate voices soaking with everything else of him – not in the discarded detritus of his Faces (which would have needed a few more years to build up to those levels), but in the forgotten 'emotion', the unnamed feeling that had brought forth the Faces in the first place._

_To a six-year-old, it was sadness. Emotions weren't exactly rocket science, to a six-year-old. But looking back, that wasn't quite it._

_It wasn't despair, either. Despair was something he'd felt a lot recently, an aching thing of desperation that was felt more for the people he cared about than for himself, more painful than what this was._

_Putting on a happy face, putting on _any_ Face – was a shortcut, a placebo. It was what you did when you didn't know, or couldn't afford, any other way to fix what was wrong with you. Faces were a child's coping mechanism – one that Jesse hadn't needed and Willow had outgrown. One that Xander had used and abused until it shattered and left him broken and adrift._

_What was left… (Tony and Jessica, drowning in their bottles)… (Angel, mourning in his apartment as Buffy walked off to her death)… (Xander, grieving with a Face)… was a master craftsman's work of irony: something he hated in others, but had forcefully ignored within himself until he could no longer find the impetus to do it._

_It was apathy. It was sloth. It was surrender to the inevitable. It was just _not caring_ anymore._

_It was what it was, and what it was, was 'meh'._

* * *

><p>Something was different today.<p>

The Summers' living room curtains were tasteful, but they were also in a lighter palate that lit up as the morning sun rose. To be fair, the way the couch was positioned blocked a great deal of the light from directly impacting whoever happened to be sleeping on it; as such, were said sleeper deeply enough in slumber, they could sleep on to their heart's content until something else awoke them. In Xander's case, however, the painkillers he had imbibed the previous night had slowly receded in their effect. So the changing, unfamiliar lightshading past his eyelids brought him to uncomfortable consciousness.

His hands hurt like the bejeezus. Burns were like that, at least after they'd hung around a while. Not like in the factory, where they were shiny (red) and new and just one of a litany of bodily complaints once the excitement was over. Now most of the other bangs and bruises and stab wounds felt dormant – though they'd flare up the moment he tried to move, as he knew from previous experience. His hands, though, they burned and itched, and burned more if he shifted them.

This was gonna drive him nuts…

Oh. _That's_ what was different. The 'meh' (still no better name for it) was still wrapped around him, leaching warmth from his metaphorical bones like a frozen blanket – but just like the brightening room had awoken Xander after the pain and irritation had worn down his cocoon of slumber, the sensations blaring up from his bandaged, burnt hands pricked at his inner lassitude in splinterrific nuisance-value.

Seriously, this was _annoying_.

'_Does Angel realise how lucky he is?_' he found himself irreverently wondering. Lazing around feeling depressed would be so much easier when you didn't have to interrupt your brood-on every few hours to get up and hit the restroom. Maybe that was how he could be so miserable for a century straight – fewer distractions, and those he had just reminded him of reasons to stay miserable… Nah, the guy sat on his ass reading _literature_, for cripes' sake. He brought it on himself. There was depression, and then there was wallowing in gratuitous angst on top of that.

Xander-Face would have added something snarky about using that angst to pick up girls. But to be completely fair to the cursed vampire, Xander privately doubted that something as simple as a happy in the sack would have broken the curse. Really, if a good enough fantasy to go with a round of spank-the-cold-monkey coulda broken it, how the hell could he still be soul-having a hundred years later? So, yeah – sure, Angel _might've_ used his Brooding Skillz (TM) to seduce Buffy. But at least he actually loved her, enough so the consummation did the job in more ways than one. (And 'consummation' was the right word too, according to the day-calender Willow had given him last year. There were rings and everything, so he'd heard.) Now, whatshisname…_Owen_, that guy had annoyed him. It wasn't so much that Owen Thurman actively used his emo ways to pick up chicks. He didn't _need_ to – they came to him. He was like Cordelia that way, he could afford to be picky – he was just more polite and way more absent-minded.

…But what the hell. It worked for him, when Owen could be bothered paying attention.

(And also, ow.)

Xander Harris had never been one for brooding. Feeling happy was better than feeling sad, and feeling sad to make yourself happy had never made sense to him. That sort of thing required people to cheer you up. Willow had never been good at that, and Jesse had tended to find himself outvoted when faced with a sad Xander _and_ a sad(-for-Xander) Willow, and no-one else had noticed or cared much. And again, it was hard to brood anyway when you had to go take a whizz, or your tummy rumbled, or your butt itched, or the cassette got to the end and you needed to flip it over to the other half.

Besides, nowadays Xander knew perfectly well that there were people worse off than him, and a lot of the time those people were just more important in the grand scheme of things. His attack on Angelus's lair had been initiated in the rock-solid assurance that his death, in and of itself, wouldn't really _affect_ anything. The mission was what mattered, was _all_ that had mattered.

(Ow…!)

…Or so he had thought.

After the whole thing with the cave, even after the sexy-bitch dance months later when it might not have mattered so much, Xander had never mentioned his own prominence in Buffy's revival to the others. Sure, it would've sounded like he was bragging to impress her, and he still honestly doubted even now that Angel would back him up if he tried it. But Angel wasn't the only one with a secret shame to hide. Buffy might not have believed him – but if she _had_… Xander had been ready to throw his own life away, if there was the slightest chance that she would live for it. No matter how important the Slayer had been when it came to saving the world that night, that still didn't speak highly for the value he held for his own life. And that wasn't something he'd even wanted to admit to himself, let alone allow the people at the centre of his universe to reflect on long enough to realise it.

So he'd repressed, and he'd had Xander-Face proclaiming for all to witness that nothing important had happened, nothing to see here, and they'd all moved right along. It hadn't done him any good, as it never did, but at least the _status quo_ had been preserved and he could go on pretending to all and sundry that it was enough to go on with.

Now it was different. Different and terrifying, in a way that had a corner of him wanting the couch to swallow him whole so he could hide his mortification until the world ended.

(Again, ow…)

Or until he needed his dressings changed, anyway.

In some ways, things were back to the _status quo_. Angel was back, and by the way Buffy had hung onto him yesterday, her eyes were squarely back on her tall'n'dark angstmuffin… not that they'd ever really left. Ms. Calender was back in the fold, and the way she'd left with Giles had been noted. Willow could relax with Xander's return, and get back to bonding with Oz. Cordelia was back to being a bitch, having moved past what had turned out to be nothing but a random and persistent attack of hormones after all – but not so much an _uncaring_ bitch, because despite snapping out of her out-of-character bout of Xander-jonesing, she'd still apparently promised to help out if it was important enough and didn't disrupt her life more than whatever the emergency was would have done anyway. And Xander was back to feeling foolish and hurting alone.

Only…not.

Not hurting, apart from the obvious physical sense. There were broody thoughts, sure. But without a Face to shape, amplify and direct it all, there wasn't really any…_energy_ behind them. It just happened to be the way his train of thought was drifting for the moment, no more substantial than the Face-wreckage of irreverence and inner turns-of-phrase that bobbed up in the mire.

And not alone, either.

His eyes drifted open to stare at the Summers' living room ceiling. A reminder, right there. It might be temporary, a matter of a few months to a couple years, but he was living _here_ now. A reminder of everything that had changed for him.

It was ironic, really. His parents had been the cause of so many of his problems, those very ones that he hadn't known and couldn't afford to linger on. And they were gone. Of course there were new problems now, and the 'meh' stood indifferent testimony to the corrosion on his psyche that remained. But they were still gone – and now he was living with Joyce and Buffy Summers. Two people who, unlike his previous housemates, at least _cared_. Ms. Summers— no, _Joyce_, he'd been told to call her Joyce, had cared enough to invite him into her life – and while the argument was there that it was largely for Buffy's sake, that was still a huge show of trust on her part. And for all that Buffy cared for Angel _more_… He remembered the tears now. They'd actually happened. She'd cared enough for that.

It wasn't just that, either.

His Face had slipped… or more accurately, had been broken. And had done so in full view of everyone he cared about. And this time… _this_ time, they'd all paid attention. There was no Angel to take the spotlight – no, this time Angel had shined it right back on _him_, and they'd all seen the not-face staring apathetically back at them.

The Xander-Face was shattered, defective, nothing but flotsam in the lethargic currents of his inner gestalt (another word-of-the-day). And while he _could_ probably fish it all up and glue it back together, there was no point. A one-sentence warning to Willow to get them to stop worrying, had inadvertently led to a rambling, droning monologue while his guard was down, and now they all knew about his Faces – or at least, the one they all knew him by. No-one would _believe_ the Xander-Face anymore.

(Ow, dammit!)

They might want to. Willow would want the Xander-Face back; for all the secrets she'd kept about his family life, for all the esoteric trivia she could rattle off about him, the facts remained: she'd nursed a crush on him for years, and she'd never approached him about it. She hadn't wanted to take a chance, and maybe lose what they had. She hadn't wanted to lose him – hadn't wanted him to _change_. And despite the memory-jog he'd given her in recent days, the Xander she knew best was the Face. Buffy and Giles would probably prefer the Face too – people arbitrarily changing on them was usually a sign of badness, literally. Just look at Angel. Or Ford. Or Xander, back when he was possessed by the Hyena. Or Willow, back with the Moloch thing. They couldn't be faulted for wanting the known to _stay_ that way. Paranoia it might be, but when they really _were_ out to get you…?

Yes, they might want to. But they wouldn't take it at Face-value. They would poke and prod at the Face to see if it was real. And it wouldn't be strong enough to fool them, let alone himself.

And Joyce? Joyce would be watching him like a hawk, both for signs of relapsing into self-sacrificing idiocy _and_ for lecherous eyes on her baby girl. Joyce wouldn't buy the Face for a _second_.

Years ago it had occurred to Xander, for all he'd attempted to avoid the subject, to wonder what might be left of him under the Faces. Well, now the Faces had failed him. His main Face had crashed, burned and sunk, his other Faces were discredited or would be the moment someone looked too close… Or in a few cases, would be written off as so non-Xandery that everyone would probably start bashing through them on general principle (Serious and Soldier being the main ones there, not to mention Hyena…ever).

It was time to find out what was left, and see what he could do without them.

And it was strange after so long drowning in the 'meh', but… there was hope. Real hope, that there might be something left to salvage for himself from the mess his life was.

He remembered, too, the incongruously optimistic shards of the Xander-Face, as they'd whispered to him of being forgiven if he managed to pull off the impossible and not screw up. And okay, it turned out that he'd jumped to the wrong conclusion in the first place. But even the most pessimistic parts of him could not argue – those Xander-shards had been right. He _had_ pulled it off. It was impossible, and he'd pulled it off anyway. And he _was_ forgiven. Sure, he'd been forgiven already, even if he hadn't known it. (And yes, he felt plenty foolish about that one now, at least insofar as he could bring himself to care.) But he was still _forgiven_.

Things had actually turned out okay. Sure, there were terrible new things on Xander's personal horizon. He'd have to find some way to function without his Faces, or at least without over-using them, if he expected to keep his friendships. He'd also need to prove himself useful in ways other than fighting, because it was obvious he was going to be sidelined for a while. (Though, Soldier-Face might actually be accepted in brief doses for that one. He'd have to think about that…) It remained to be seen how well he would get along with the Summers family in close proximity, perticularly given the fact that they were two extremely desirable labies who he would have to look in the face afterwards if he ever dared to…dare he say it, think about linoleum under their roof. And that was assuming no problems cropped up with the transfer of guardianship. Somehow it sounded too easy to be true… Oh, and lest it be forgotten? He would now be at ground-zero for the whole Buffy/Angel epic tragedy in motion – not so much 'break out the popcorn' range as 'oh shit they're dragging me onstage!' range. That could _not_ be of the fun.

But who knew? They might turn out okay too.

Maybe.

…Yeah, it was a long-shot. The 'meh' wasn't going to drain off and wash away just because he'd had a couple short-term successes and one big stroke of mid-term luck.

But then, he had his friends, who weren't going to let him stew in his fatalism and drift away. And then there was Joyce Summers. Hmm, unstoppable force meets immovable object—

Alright, fucking _ow_! And now his shoulder was cramping up too. The one with the stab wound. "Yeah, screw this," he muttered, letting the wince flash across his face without pause or notice as he levered himself up by his right elbow and stood – it was time for a top-up on the drugs.

And so began the first day in nearly a decade, that Xander Harris didn't even think of putting on a happy Face to get through it.

Whether this was a good thing… Well. Time would tell.

* * *

><p><strong>Ending AN:** You know, I haven't actually decided how true to the general Divergence!Xander portrayal this is. It _could_ fit, I think. For instance, I took care to embed a point at which he started putting the rest of his Faces into long-storage, and abandoning the other Faces altogether wouldn't be too much of a stretch given a few months and years. But whether it does…?  
>Well… meh. It seems to work well enough for the purposes of this fic. And hopefully you, the reader, think so too.<p>

The epilogue will be up…hmm, in a couple weeks, that sounds about right. It'll be about a year on, centred around "The Zeppo" timeframe because that would be the most obvious crisis-point at which a 'Bad End' Divergence might otherwise result (apart from the Sadie Hawkins dance, anyway). Hope you enjoyed this latest instalment, and again, feedback would be most appreciated. Until next time…


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